Blind Opening
by Skysalla
Summary: When Clint's undercover assignment goes to hell, he finds himself thrust into a new mission without SHIELD's permission or approval.
1. Prologue

Author's Notes:

This is officially the longest fic I have ever written. It's taken FOREVER to get it this far. Major kudos to Jess for her plotting help. Cheyenne for making my grammar betterer. ;) as well as Jenny, Lucy and Maja for your constant amazingness and support. While the story is not finished yet, it will be finished and posted in its entirety by the end of the month. Since I'm going out of town then and also the WIP Big Bang Deadline. I don't miss deadlines. I just run right up against them. :D I don't own the things.

* * *

~-~-~PROLOGUE~-~-~

Natasha adjusted the top of her dress, making sure to reveal just the right amount of cleavage to throw her mark off his game. She sighed as she fell back into the comfortable sofa. The monotony of solo missions was starting to bore her to tears.

It had been over two months since Agent Barton had been sent off on some super top secret mission that not even she was allowed to know the details of and she was starting to miss his annoying chatter that usually bombarded her over her earpiece as he covered her from two buildings over. She was sure he was having just about as good a time as she was.

She pulled at her dress again, more out of boredom than anything else. The mark was supposed to be meeting her for a "drop." She just hoped there weren't any dull cronies. The seduction aspect of her mission never worked as well when there were cronies.

A specific knock pattern fell upon her door, and Natasha flipped her brain back into mission mode. She was Marie DuBuis, a French woman vacationing in Rome. Quietly striding to the door, she mustered up her best French accent and pulled the door open.

"Bonjour, Monsieur….s?" She faltered, her accent holding long enough for her to trail off her words.

"Madame," The mark replied. "I trust we're not too late for you."

"Oh, non! Not at all." She fought to hold the accent steady as she held the opened door for Peter Bemovich and his croonie of choice – Clint Barton.

Peter made his way in, instantly finding the dish of fruit she had arranged at the coffee table. Clint was slower to follow and made no indication that he knew her. His left eye – his aiming eye as she knew – was partially swollen shut and the injury seemed to be about 2-3 weeks old based on the bruising. He held himself stiffly as he walked, a way she'd known him to do when trying to conceal an injury. Based on his gait it was something with one of his legs, the left if she had to guess.

As he passed her she noticed his hands were clasped firmly behind his back and three of the fingers on his left hand were taped together. A bit of bandage was just poking out from under his sleeves on both wrists. He stood just behind and to the right of Peter and took up a typical guard stance.

What the hell kind of mission was Clint even on?

She put all speculation out of her mind and turned with a smile back to Peter. "Can I get you a drink, Monsieur?" She knew better than to offer one to Clint, as backup for the mark he would be ignored by Peter unless absolutely necessary. She could tell by his dry lips and slightly open mouth that he was parched and wished she could do something, anything to alleviate just one of his many aches.

"No, no. Just the briefcase." Straight to business, Natasha could handle that.

She padded across the room barefoot and leaned against the desk. "And the payment?"

"Fifteen. As negotiated."

"We negotiated twenty." She didn't really care about the numbers, or the exchange. Her mission was ulterior to that. Clint only complicated things as she wasn't sure what his mission was. She was going to have words with Coulson about that.

"I'll pay fifteen." Peter stood and held a hand back to Clint who promptly took an envelope from his jacket and deposited it into Peter's hands.

Natasha turned her head away and lowered her shoulder just enough to allow one strap of her dress to fall loose against her arm. "Fifteen then, but only if you personally make up the difference." She mustered up a look that seemed to long of lust and glanced back to him.

"I've heard you prefer to take your payments by more," he drawled out his next words, "unconventional means." Peter removed his jacket and started to work on the buttons of his shirt. "I'm sure I can make it up to you."

Everything was playing according to the mission protocol, except Clint. She needed him out so she could finish her job. "What about your friend?" She purred into Peter's ear as she pulled his shirtless body against hers. "I prefer not to be watched by strange men when getting my payment…"

He put the envelope on the desk beside her and, with his other hand, brushed the remaining dress strap off her shoulder. Without the straps, she was able to wiggle her hips just enough for the dress to fall to the floor. "He stays." Peter took in her lace underclothes before closing the distance between them and beginning to kiss up her neck. "Barton, the door." He managed in between kisses.

She gasped, allowing him to believe it was his hands causing her shock and not the fact that Clint wasn't using a code name. Every mission had code names. Every. One. She'd been forced to remember dumb name after dumb name, one backstory after the next. And here was Clint Barton responding to his own name while undercover.

Peter pushed her up onto the desk and shoved his still clothed lower half between her legs. He started to grind rough pants against her and she knew she had to make her move before this went too far. She trusted Clint would back her up.

She wrapped her legs around his waist and he groaned, thinking this was her way of escalating things to the next step, but instead she smashed her forehead against his nose and pushed off the desk with enough force to knock him flat on his back. He missed banging his head against the coffee table but before he could comprehend what had happened Natasha was rolling over his head in a tight somersault to the other end of the small round table.

Reaching up underneath the coffee table, she pulled loose a set of handcuffs and was springing back towards Peter when a strong left hook caught her from behind in the side of the head. Despite her vision dancing with stars for a moment, she turned and was ready to fight –

Clint.

She narrowed her eyes at him, trying to silently get him to communicate his plan but he was having none of that as he unleashed a fury of punches straight for her face. Natasha deflected the majority of them before kicking him in what she had rightly assumed was his injured left leg. He grunted at the pain but wasted no time in adjusting and pressing back on the offense.

She was pulling her punches and not aiming for his face, but could tell he wasn't doing the same. The confusion threw her off and before she knew it, he had her right arm wrenched up behind her back and the left one pinned across the front of her body.

Peter sat on the floor and started to chuckle as Clint handcuffed her left hand to the doorknob. He kept her right wrist at a painful angle that she knew could pop her shoulder out of its socket easily. One of his legs was wrapped around hers, immobilizing it, and she knew based on his stance how easy it would be for any number of her bones to be broken if she bothered moving.

"Now you see, Madame DuBois, why I keep him around." Peter lifted himself off the ground with another chuckle. "The briefcase?"

She pulled for show but relaxed submissively into Clint's grip. "Under the bed." Peter moved to retrieve it and Natasha turned her head ever so slightly towards Clint. "Clint?" she whispered, barely able to see his swollen eye from the corner of her own eyes. "What's going on?"

Clint said nothing and merely tightened his grip on her wrist, causing her to wince in pain as Peter came back to the room. "I can see based on its location, you had been expecting a more enjoyable evening…But handcuffs and all that other bondage stuff isn't my style. So you're fine with the agreed upon fifteen then?"

"It doesn't appear you're giving me much of a choice." She hissed at him as he crossed the room to stand in front of her. He was taking her in again, specifically the fast rise of her chest after the scuffle with Clint. He ran a hand delicately down her right side where Clint had her arm pinned back.

"Shame, really. We could have had such fun."

"I told you I don't like audiences."

"Clint, I don't think I want to kill her...if we run into her again, she may be fun to have around." He winked before slapping her on the butt. "But do make things difficult."

She only had a second to wonder what that meant before Clint was snapping the bone in her right wrist. Her cry of shock and pain seemed to fall on deaf ears as he walked away and left her hanging from the doorknob.

Natasha barely waited for them to leave the room before shouting into her comm. "Coulson. What. The. Hell?"

The clean up team found her right where Clint had left her. One arm dangling from the doorknob in a tight cuff, the other cradled against her chest. Aside from the broken bone her injuries were superficial and she knew it. Even the break seemed relatively smooth.

Coulson came in personally with the extraction team – his usual M.O. for missions that went to hell. He kneeled beside her and ghosted a hand along her head. "Tell me what happened, Natasha." He went to work picking the lock on the cuff.

"Clint."

Phil faltered with the lockpick. "He was here?" She could only nod in response as Phil clicked the lock open. "What happened?" It was clear Phil was holding his breath, knew they'd have to pull her out of the field for her arm anyways…but there was something he wasn't telling her about Clint.

"He didn't say anything. Didn't even blink."

Phil draped a blanket over her shoulders and helped her cautiously to her feet. "Okay."

"Phil, where did you send him? What is this mission he's on?"

"Natasha…protocol –"

"Bullshit, Phil! My partner just walked in here and I was unprepared. I did not have sufficient intel to do my damn job. And what the hell kind of mission did you send Clint on that would cause him to break my fucking arm!?"

Phil turned away but Natasha wasn't having any of it.

"He's hurt, Phil. He needs to be pulled out."

"I… I can't." Phil stammered. "He won't."

"What?"

"We sent him on a deep cover mission. He needed to infiltrate an organization and get them to trust him. Half the family ended up murdered, we lost all contact with him. There were some that thought he might have died-"

"And you didn't think to tell me any of this?!" If she'd had full use of her right hand, she might have punched him.

"It was need to know. Only a half a dozen people even knew about his mission. I was going to tell you after the first two weeks of radio silence but we got wind of someone matching his description from one of our sources. It was enough for me to believe he was still alive…"

"What did you mean when you said he wouldn't come out?"

"I sent the signal for him to extract." Phil shifted. "I sent it five times. Protocol dictates that I call it when it's been ignored twice!"

She didn't want to ask, even though she knew the answer before her mouth formed the words. "Call. What."

"Agent Barton has officially been declared a traitor to SHIELD and his country."


	2. The Mission

"Your mission is simple. Infiltrate Rodrigo's organization and befriend his son, Alex. We've got to get him to turn against his father or they stand to become the strongest arms dealers in the world."

"Wouldn't it be easier to just shoot them both from a few miles out?" Clint muttered as he lazily flipped through the file, feet up on the desk.

"No. SHIELD wants them in play. We just don't want them gaining any more power than they already have." Coulson circled around the table and pulled out his chair to sit across from Clint. "You're going to be in pretty deep cover for a while."

"Yeah, I get that."

Phil handed him another file. "You're Nathanial Larks, security for a drug dealer in LA. Our fictitious drug dealer also has a Mexican branch. You with me?"

Clint nodded. If Phil didn't know him so well, it would look like the archer wasn't paying any attention.

"Since you don't exactly pass off as Mexican, you're going to use the dead girlfriend excuse. Your boss didn't give you the approved time off and you're laying low in Mexico looking to start fresh so you don't have to go back to working with him."

"Can't I just give them some bullshit about how much I love tacos instead?"

Coulson snapped the folder out of Clint's hands and pointedly tapped the cover story that was outlined. "I do not prepare these covers so you can make up whatever suits you."

Clint pulled the folder back. "Okay, okay. I get it."

"We'll use your regular extraction cue."

Clint snorted. "Seriously? You're going to stick with a want ad for a 'lost, one eyed hawk'? Who even owns hawks anymore?"

"You don't own hawks, Barton. Falconry is not about _owning_ a hawk. It's about the bond between a wild bird of prey and a man. About hunting together and accomplishing-"

"God, Coulson. You're a fucking nerd."

"I'm just saying. Falconry is a lifestyle. The relationship that develops with a wild animal must be strong enough to encourage the bird to come back to the falconer."

"Please stop talking. I've got a mission to prep for." Clint gathered the paperwork and headed for the door.

"Oh eight hundred."

"Yeah, yeah."

* * *

Clint was annoyed to find out that Rodrigo Montoya's son Alex, was not actually a boy at all but instead a very, very boyish looking girl. She was in her early twenties and apparently primed to start leading her own branch of her father's organization.

He'd spent the morning tailing what he believed to be Alex Montoya's girlfriend in an effort to find his target only to discover she was actually the Alex he was looking for. Coulson's ideas for getting him inside the compound had to be thrown out the second he realized the mark was a girl and he'd retired to a shooting range he'd found between his local accommodations and the mark's home.

"SHIELD really needs to do something about their intel," he muttered as he let off another shot at the target in front of him. It had been about an hour since he'd left a fairly grumpy message for Coulson to call him back and the gun range seemed like the best place to let off some steam while he waited. Two more quick bursts and his magazine was spent.

_"That's some pretty fancy shooting,"_ a soft voice said behind him in Spanish. _"You bested the record."_

_"Not even a personal best,"_ Clint found himself growling back in Spanish as he pulled the gun back and removed the mandatory goggles. "_Too easy_."

Turning, he found himself face to face with none other than Alex Montoya herself. Her boyish figure was even more emphasized by her choice of clothing and the gun dangling from her right hand. "_It was my record."_

_"Yeah, well. Keep practicing._" Now that she'd met him, any options for continuing this mission had gone to shit.

He made it all the way to the desk and started doing a run through of the equipment with the desk clerk when she approached him again. _"Show me."_

_"Sorry?"_

_"Not even a personal best? Prove it. Do better."_

Clint narrowed his eyes at the girl. _"What's in it for me?"_

_"Hundred thousand Pesos."_ That Clint hadn't been expecting. "_And a job."_

_"And if I can't?"_

_"Hundred thousand, and a finger."_ The girl smirked. While Clint was pretty attached to his fingers, years of being a carnie taught him to never back down from a seemingly impossible challenge.

_"Double or nothing if I can do it in half the time."_ He grabbed the gun back from the shell-shocked employee at the counter and snatched up another box of ammo.

_"Deal."_ Alex followed after him. "_Looks like I'm about to get me a couple of fingers."_

Fifteen minutes later, Clint was happily counting two hundred thousand Pesos and waiting in front of the range for the girl to get off the phone with her father. Coulson naturally chose then to call in on Clint's cell.

He dug out the phone and paced around the corner, dropping about a third his winnings at the feet of some poor homeless person. "Your intel sucked."

"What's the problem, Clint?"

"Your son isn't a son at all, but a fucking daughter."

The other end of the line went silent and Clint could practically picture Coulson's mind whirring to process the new data.

_"Hey SharpShooter!"_ Alex called to him from around the corner. _"You still want that job?"_

"Screw it, Coulson. I'm in. Just get the fucking intel right next time. Someone could get killed with the lousy information they've been turning out lately." He snapped off the phone and pocketed it before turning to Alex and switching back to Spanish_. "Of course."_

The job was essentially a glorified bodyguard. He was given limited access to the family villa and frequently assigned to hang out in one of their guard towers whenever there was a delivery or visitor coming in.

Every morning Clint made it a point to read the local paper. He pretended his Spanish wasn't good enough to understand everything so he has an excuse to ask Alex for some translation and explanation. Pretending to be an American as part of his cover had its perks.

_"You Americans have such terrible Spanish."_

_"No, I think it's this awful newspaper."_ Clint folded the paper dramatically and chucked it back onto the table. _"I'm great at Spanish!"_

Alex laughed at him as she poured herself some coffee. _"Why do you read that garbage?"_

_"It's the news."_

_"It's a lie."_ She sat across from him.

Clint watched as she stirred her coffee, and then tapped her spoon on the edge of her cup exactly three times like Natasha always did. _"What do you mean?"_

_"Reporters are paid to report but they are paid by corporations pushing their own agendas. Go in to town see the people, see what is not reported on."_

_"There are two sides to every story."_

_"Show me some more of that fancy shooting. Then I will show you the real news."_

He raised an eyebrow at her. _"You think I'm going to teach myself out of a job?"_

She pulled a knife and, without hesitating, stabbed the table between his hand and his coffee cup. _"I think it's part of your job."_

Her serious face was so forced Clint couldn't help but chuckle. The determination however reminded him of his days in the circus and trying to convince Jacques to teach him new tricks. _"Alright, kid. I'll show you a few things."_

They spent every afternoon and evening when Clint wasn't doing some form of security practicing on her personal range. He helped her improve her shot by teaching her how to work on instinct but kept most of his carnie tricks to himself.

Despite orders to the contrary, Clint found it incredibly difficult not to get attached to the young girl who had both his tenacity and Natasha's fiery passion. He watched her take what was likely the hundredth attempt at a near impossible shot and couldn't help but wonder what kind of terror actually combining the two assassins would produce. Not that it would ever happen. Natasha would kill him before she'd even consider it.

Alex cursed again seeing she had missed yet another shot. _"This is impossible."_ She yelled, throwing the gun down and ripping off the gloves she was wearing before throwing them onto the floor as well. _"No one can make that."_

Clint smirked as he gently picked up the gun and wiped it down. _"Care to make another wager?"_

_"Hell no. You cheat."_

He stepped into position anyways and checked over the gun once more. The shot was hard but would actually be easier if he ricocheted the bullet off a nearby metal beam, which would then adjust the bullet's trajectory so it would hit the target perfectly. He calculated, aiming first for the target, then for the ricochet point. When he had his shot lined up, he turned his head away and looked Alex in the eyes as he pulled the trigger.

Her expression went from mocking to disbelief in perfect timing from the sound of the ping off the metal beam to the sound of the soft thump of the bullet hitting its target.

_"How the -?"_

He didn't need to look back to know he had sunk dead center, her expression was enough. _"First rule of being a good shooter." _She took the gun as he gently pressed it into her hands. "_Respect the equipment."_

As he hit the door to the range, he nearly ran face first into his actual employer, Rodrigo Montoya. Rodrigo pushed past him towards Alex and handed her a letter. Clint hesitated in the doorway as she opened it.

_"They accepted my deal?"_

Rodrigo nodded. _"I'll send Carlos to do the exchange."_

_"No. I want to go. This is my sale."_

_"Alex -"_

_"__We'll bring backup."_ Alex's eyes met Clint's and he nodded.


	3. The Drop

He watched her through his scope as she exited the car in sync with her father. It was a simple cover position, but all of Clint's years with SHIELD taught him that Webster's definition of 'simple' required some major modifications to even come close to the field definition.

The radio next to him crackled as one of the Montoyas coughed. It was low tech compared to his usual SHIELD gear, but it did the job so he wasn't complaining.

Four pairs of headlights approached and Clint would have discounted them had they not turned in sharply to the warehouse parking lot. The deal was supposed to be a total of two people on each side. No way could he cover against this many without someone getting killed.

"Shit." He scrambled to readjust his perch, hoping that what looked to be an empty shipping container on his one o'clock would provide a better angle against the increased number of adversaries.

As he darted through the darkened lot, he listened intently to the voices on his radio for a turn of events. It would royally screw everything if he failed to cover them while running to a new perch.

"Good evening," the Russian voice chirped. "I'm glad to be doing business with the prestigious Montoya family. The prices in Europe have been soaring lately." The man 'tsk'd'.

Clint scrambled up the ladder on the butt end of what actually turned out to be a giant dumpster. He climbed in and waded through unknown garbage to take up his perch, just poking his head and rifle out of the top of the dumpster.

"I'm always open for new business, Senor Bumovich." Rodrigo crossed to the trailer behind his car and opened the back. "You'll see everything is ready as ordered."

_"These idiot Mexicans really believe I'm going to pay for their shit?"_ The Russian took Clint by surprise and he silently thanked Natasha for all the lessons she had given him in the difficult language.

"I'm glad to see you're pleased." Rodrigo retorted, clearly not reading any warning signs on Bumovich's face. _"Why did they bring so many men?"_ His Spanish was directed at Alex.

"Shit, shit, shit." It was like watching the op blow up in slow motion – being able to understand both side languages. Clint knew if he started shooting now, he'd lose both his charges in about thirteen seconds.

Alex closed the trailer and walked around it to the hitch. Where she was squatted down detaching the trailer she'd be in relative safety if any gunfire broke out. As much as Clint wanted to start the shooting and take out the whole team of Russians, he knew better than to instigate without getting word to his team.

"_Kill them."_ The voice in Russian barely carried to the walkie at his side, but Clint fired at the exact same moment they fired on Rodrigo. His man collapsed in a heap and Clint kept on firing as the Russians scrambled for cover. Four enemy men lay dead, but six were still ducking behind various hiding spaces.

He'd seen one duck behind a car and another had rolled behind the trailer. But he'd lost sight of Alex and unless one of them came out, they had a stalemate. It was a moment of silence as Clint watched for some movement that he could take advantage of.

"_You obviously speak Russian."_ The voice came over the walkie. "_So come out now, or I will torture the girl slowly to death."_

Alex's sharp cry came over the walkie then and damned if Clint had not spent so long getting to know the kid he might have walked away. Instead, he raised his rifle and hefted himself out of the dumpster.

As he approached, he noticed Rodrigo's body slumped against the back of the trailer, a grotesque trail of blood smeared down the door. A goonie held Alex up as Clint approached, his rifle held over his head.

"To whom do we owe the honor?" The lead Russian questioned, as he nodded for Clint to drop the gun and kick it over. "Sharpshooting such as that doesn't come easy."

"Clint Barton." The man holding Alex spoke up before Clint could give some made up spiel. His cover was blown. "One of the world's best sharpshooters and assassins. Secret agent of some sort now if the rumors are true."

Alex's eyes flashed wide with surprise and then narrowed in anger as she stared down Clint.

Clint snorted at the man. "Secret agent? Don't you remember our job together, Jake? You really think I'd go agent?" He spat the word 'agent' with as much venom as possible. "Who the fuck are you?!" Clint growled as he leveled his gaze on the man seemingly in charge.

"Peter Bumovich." The tall man stepped over to one of his fallen comrades and checked for a pulse. Finding nothing, he turned back to Clint. "Tell me, Mr. Barton, who are you here to kill?"

"No one." Movement at his backside had Clint spare a glance to one of the remaining goons who started circling around behind him. "In between contracts. The Montoya Family offered me a job. Gotta fill the piggy bank somehow."

Peter seemed to consider this for a moment and glanced to Jake for confirmation. It had been nearly nine years since Clint had worked with Jake, the other shrugged and refused to confirm or deny Clint's story.

"Look. You got your weapons. Just let the kid go." Clint shifted his stance, trying to remember some of the more advanced techniques Natasha had taught him about taking down larger groups. "I'm not getting paid to kill anyone here so I'll just take the girl and we'll go."

"Getting soft, Barton?"

"Getting too old to clean up twelve people's bloody corpses, Jake." He scowled at his former cohort. "Even in Mexico that's not a good idea. Too many questions."

"He's right." Peter nodded his head to the guard behind Clint. "Bodies do bring too many questions."

Clint had anticipated the guy behind him going on the attack, and was able to dodge the first and even the follow up kick. He grabbed the man's arm and twisted it away. The man cried out and Clint was forced to release him as a second and third man came forward.

He ducked under the third man's right hook and was knocked off course by a kick to the side from the second man as he attempted to deliver an uppercut. Another man tried to kick Clint's legs out from under him.

As Clint deflected the sweeping kick with a grab of the man's legs, he felt a sharp biting pinch in the side of his neck that he quickly recognized as a needle. "Goddammit."

Not knowing what was in the needle that had just been injected into his neck, Clint figured he had anywhere from thirty seconds to fifteen minutes to do as much damage as possible. He took the opportunity to spin the man whose leg he was still holding into his buddy before turning and punching the needle guy with so much force blood instantly started gushing from the man's nose.

The effort tired Clint out more than he expected and it became harder and harder to distinguish shapes as his vision quickly blurred into nothing.


	4. Clipped Wings

Clint drifted in and out of consciousness for some time. He would pick up bits of conversation but before he started to feel like himself again, another sharp bite in the side of his neck gave him very little time before he was fading out again.

He thought he was in an airplane, if the motion of the floor was any indication. When he finally woke up fully, he found the light vibration of an airborne plane had been replaced with a swaying that was a direct result of being chained and hung by his wrists.

He was just low enough that he could have stood if his body would respond to him. But no matter how much Clint concentrated on getting his legs underneath him, they refused to cooperate.

"Tu-pid 'egs. 'ate oo 'oo." His tongue felt oddly thick. He kept his eyes down at his feet, attempting to move them only when he heard a door open.

Feet stepped into his line of sight and he quickly felt a hand grabbing a fistful of his hair, lifting his unusually heavy head up so he could look at his captor.

"Enjoying the view, Mr. Barton?" Peter released Clint's head, letting it fall backwards so he had no choice but to look up at the man. "I don't typically like to take captives, but Jake spoke so highly of your skills…" Peter circled slowly around Clint who was only able to track the man by the soft footsteps his feet made as he paced. "I've been lacking a sharpshooter in my organization and frankly, forced recruiting is much, much cheaper than paying employees."

Clint struggled to get control over his body. "dun eee-e pay –"

Peter laughed. "Sorry, Mr. Barton. I don't really want to hear what you have to say." He stepped back into Clint's line of sight, another loaded needle in his hand. "This version won't knock you out." The needle was pushed into the side of Clint's neck, "but the paralysis will remain."

He could do nothing but curse inside his head at his stupid body.

"You caused me to lose quite a few good men, Mr. Barton." Peter stepped away. "My favorite body guard, dead by your hands."

More than anything, Clint wished he could have chirped at that, said something, anything to give himself a semblance of power in this situation. A gentle hand cupped the right side of Clint's face, steadying it upright.

"I should add that this drug causes hypersensitivity across your nerves. Particularly heightening your pain receptors." With that, Peter threw a right hook across Clint's face.

The punch rattled off his left cheekbone and Clint barely had time to mentally recuperate before punch after punch was brought against his face. He grunted – it was the only sound he could make.

Finally, Peter released the steadying hold he had on Clint's head. "Two punches for each of my men that you've killed." Clint's head lolled forward against his chest and hung there as blood tainted drool trailed from his mouth.

"Let's do this again tomorrow."

* * *

Coulson sat at the extraction point for the fifth time that week. On the bar in front of him was the day's paper, open to the classifieds. He had circled his ad for a "lost one eyed hawk" in a dark sharpie in case Clint needed to send someone on his behalf – it wouldn't be the first time.

His eyes couldn't help drifting to the other page he had open for the paper. The Montoya family had been making headlines ever since the little incident near outside of a warehouse. The girl had been okay, only a few scrapes. But the father was in a coma and clinging to life.

Alex had been attributed with five kills and the girl even seemed to be bragging about them. Coulson had read the reports, at least four of the deaths had come from a distance and, if he ever found Barton, he was going to give the agent the worst assignments to punish him for being so sloppy and not calling in the deaths right away. There were protocols and cleanup requirements for every mission and as much as Clint didn't like the granule details of paperwork and protocol, Coulson had made it very very clear his agents were expected to follow them.

"Lost a hawk?"

Coulson jumped at the voice behind him and for a moment he hoped beyond hope he was getting word about his lost agent. "Yeah. He went off for a nice hunt but hasn't been back."

"Oh don't worry." The large, gruff man dropped beside Coulson. "I have some experience with Falconry. Assuming he's come back before and he's not dead – well, he'll come back to you."

Coulson gave the man a forced smile. It was the dead part he was worried about. "Thank you." He forced himself to take a sip of his water, there was a chance Clint had sent this man. "That's very reassuring."

The man laughed. "You're new at this, huh?" He waived at the bartender for a beer. "How long you had this particular hawk?"

Coulson gave the man a scrutinizing look as the bartender dropped off the beer. If Clint had sent this guy, it wouldn't be the weirdest liaison. "He's been in the family a few years. My, uh…uncle found him."

"A rescue, eh? They always cause problems."

"Yeah, he was pretty damaged when we brought him in…"

The man gulped down half of his beer. "Buck up. If you've rescued him, the bond is even more concrete. Especially if he's come back before."

"He has."

"There ya have it! You'll see your little hawk again." The man grinned and picked up his beer as he stood and headed for the pool table.

"I will," Phil muttered to himself.

The man stopped and turned back, his face fallen and suddenly very serious. "I know how hard it can be to lose a family member. I lost my hawk last year, hardest thing ever." He waived at the bartender to put a beer for Phil on his tab. "So if he's gone, I'm sorry. I'm really sorry."

The man squeezed Phil's shoulder and wiped a tear from his eye. With that the man turned and walked away.

The bartender dropped a beer in front of Coulson. Phil grabbed it and started chugging it down. He wouldn't let it be true.

But the man had a point. If he wasn't dead Clint would have sent word by now, especially in light of such newsworthy events.

His phone lit up with an incoming call – Natasha. He was supposed to meet her for a briefing for one of her upcoming missions. Coulson allowed the call to go to voicemail as he folded the paper on the bar and covertly placed a camera bug where it would be able to see if Clint came in.

His hopes were low that Clint would. As much as the man complained about rules, a lot of it was just for show. He never left his handler hanging.


	5. Shattered

After five rounds of his 'punishment,' Clint wasn't sure if he'd ever have use of his left eye again. It had swollen shut on round one and he wasn't sure but he thought he lost a tooth on round two or three. But it was probably at least one each round if his luck was any indication.

Clint could feel the effects of the drug starting to wear off and struggled to get his feet below him to alleviate the pain on his chafed wrists for even a little while. He pushed himself up with his right foot and his shoulders drooped the few inches this allowed him.

He leaned the uninjured half of his face against his arm. It was hard to sleep constantly dangling from ones wrists and Clint found himself exhausted. In fact he had a strange feeling that between the drugs and the lack of sleep, if they unchained him and walked away he wouldn't have the energy to drag himself out of the room for at least a week.

Maybe he dozed for a few minutes, he couldn't tell. But he stirred at the sound of the door opening and Peter entering the room.

"Hathn't my face broken yer g'damn fis yet?" Clint slurred at the man.

Peter chuckled. "Not even a split knuckle. But then, I've been wearing a leather glove."

Clint groaned when he noticed the glove now. It meant he was in for another round of playing punch bag.

"I see your drugs have worn off for the most part. Good for you, standing up now! I didn't realize how tall you…weren't." He gave Clint a gentle push to test his strength. Clint swayed, but didn't drop back down to the painful dangling position of the last five days.

"We alm'st dun h're? I gotta date." Clint tried to smile, but the left half of his face was too bruised to work the necessary facial muscles.

"Well maybe you do, Mr. Barton." Peter took a hold of Clint's left arm and drew it towards him. As he did so the chain seemed to be loosened by an external source and Clint found his arm lowered from above his head for the first time in five days.

The stiff muscles in his shoulder protested and Clint had to grind his teeth until Peter had stopped. "You see, Jake tells me he used to work with you." Peter made as if he was inspecting the tormented skin under Clint's shackle. "But it seems the Great Hawkeye has been pretty quiet as of late in the assassin for hire market."

Clint tried to shrug, but only got about halfway before his tortured shoulder muscles spasmed on him. He grit his teeth a little harder until the spasming stopped.

"Now what could stop one of the world's best sharpshooters from doing what he does best? Go straight maybe?"

"Naw. Only shoo' strai-AHHH!" The unexpected snapping of his forefinger caused Clint to drop off his feet, jerking down to hang from his still suspended right arm. "WHAT?!"

"You sure about that, Mr. Barton?"

"Pretty damn!" The adrenaline kicked in from the pain was clearing up his speech and for the first time in days, he thought he had a chance to talk his way into some information. He scrambled back up to his feet and winced at the pain he felt in his right arm as he stood – that last fall dislocated it for sure.

Peter had gone back to what Clint had dubbed the "little side cupboard of magic joy" and was refilling a needle with a familiar liquid.

"Are you fucking serious with this? Why can't we talk like normal ass adults?" Clint didn't want to panic, but he knew the pain in his finger and shoulder would only be multiplied by the serum. "So I took time off, I'm not a goddamn machine." As the needle was driven into Clint's neck again, he barely had time to form a coherent sentence before the effects would start up again. "What the fuck do you want from me?"

"Right now, I just want you to entertain me." Peter paced the room for a good minute. Both he and Clint knew the stall was only to allow the new dose to take affect.

When his next finger snapped, the room disappeared as his vision blacked out and Clint's howl hurt his own ears.

Peter smiled and took a third finger in his hands and Clint could only pray for unconsciousness.

* * *

Coulson could count on one hand the number of times Director Fury had come in to his office unannounced. Usually the man called Coulson up so he wouldn't have to take time away from the thousands of other things he was juggling in order to speak with one of his agents.

Fury walked in on him while Coulson was surrounded with piles of papers outlining Mexican missing persons, unidentified corpses, John Does checked in to hospitals, and prison reports from the last week. He had decided the time consuming nature of doing the search on paper would help distract him from the fact that his agent was still missing.

"Director Fury," Phil nodded for the director to take a chair. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

Fury remained standing behind the chair, his gaze skimming across the papers strewn about Coulson's desk. "I think you know, Phil."

"Something is wrong, Sir." Phil pulled another set of papers off a stack and started flipping through them. "He's never done this before. He always sends word. I've got to figure out what happened."

"Coulson." Fury placed a hand on one of the stacks of paper. His eye was soft with concern. "Coulson, We need to accept the facts. I've got other missions I need you to look after and I can't have you sidelining them on a fool's errand without a lead!"

"I have a lead."

Fury took a step back. "What's that?"

"Barton would never do this to us. He always checks in."

"Coulson, you know that's not a lead." Fury does sit down now and rests his elbows on his knees as he looks over the desk to Phil. "Without a proper lead, the council is preventing me from dedicating any more manpower to this case. You know they've not been of fan of Barton since I brought him in."

"He's a good agent." Phil felt unusually inclined to defend his agent, especially against the annoyingly biased opinions of the council.

"I'm not arguing that. I'm just not allowed to dedicate manpower. Which means I have to close this most recent mission file."

Phil could feel the anger rising up in him unnaturally fast. "What does that mean for Barton, Sir?" He took great care to speak slowly and with a measured voice to prevent his anger from bubbling over.

"I had to declare him MIA until we can get something else." Fury sounded defeated as he started stacking the different piles of paper on Coulson's desk for him. "MIA is the most hopeful and least traitorous. It's best for Barton. We've got flags set up if he goes through any Mexican airport, any border check or hell we'll even find out if he takes a boat out of the country." Once the papers were stacked in a big pile, Fury stood. "Let facial recognition do its job. You need to get some sleep."

"With all due respect, Sir, I'm not giving up on my agent."

"I'm not asking you to give up, Coulson. I'm asking you to remember you have other agents who are active and need your supervision. Don't jeopardize Romanoff's Belize trip on account of this. Her mission takes precedence."

Phil shoved the neatly stacked pile of papers Fuy had left on his desk to the floor and stood up so violently his chair tumbled over backwards. "Precedence? A man. My agent. Her partner. Is. Missing." Fury didn't blink at his outburst and Coulson clenched his fists almost wishing he had a reason to carry on.

"You're right. He is missing. Missing without a trace. We've got nothing. We've combed the area thoroughly, have been running constant surveillance and we still have jack shit." Fury leaned over Coulson's desk to look him in the eye. "We don't even know the real names of the people the Montoya's met with when this all went to hell."

"If you'd just let me talk to-"

"We've been over this, Phil."

Phil closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Fury was right. "Is he locked out of the system?"

"No. MIA agents can still call in." Fury straightened up and stepped away from the desk again, taking care to not step on the papers strewn about the floor. "For all we know he's drinking margaritas on a beach somewhere giving me the finger because I made him go on that mission to Istanbul on his birthday."

Coulson couldn't help but chuckle at the mental image. "He hated Istanbul."

Fury nodded and opened the door. "You'll be the first to know if there's any hits on his IDs."


	6. The Choice

When Clint woke up he realized quite quickly that hanging from one arm that was attached to a dislocated shoulder while nursing three broken fingers on your other hand was even harder than trying to hang from two arms.

At the rate he was going, Clint was pretty sure he'd never get to shoot his bow again.

With that in mind, he was nearly ready to just give up. He'd been shooting his bow for so many years, he wasn't sure he would want to go on without it.

_'Snap out of it Clint.' _He chastised himself internally. _'You'll heal. You always do.' _Yeah, he apparently was so pathetic that he needed to give himself a pep talk. Awesome.

He tried his legs, but they weren't quite ready to respond to him and take the weight off his poor shoulder. As he hung there, Clint pondered his conversations with Peter and what he thought he had overheard during his drug induced transit.

Peter had distinctly said 'recruitment' early on in the whole face punchbag scenario. If this was how potential employees were treated, Clint sure as hell didn't want to be an enemy prisoner.

He closed his good eye and tried to recall his sporadic bouts of consciousness on the plane. Something had been said about the 'bigger picture', and 'killing dogs.' Although the more Clint thought about it, the more he was pretty sure the 'dogs' in question was actually a reference or a derogatory word for some group of humans Peter and his friends didn't like.

If Peter didn't kill him first, he'd have to figure a way to learn more about this scheme and ideally put a stop to it.

The familiar creak of the door jarred Clint back to reality. "Afternoon, Mr. Barton."

"Go ta hell."

Peter stepped up beside Clint and gave him a pat on the left shoulder. "Now, now. If it's all the same to you, I'd like to discuss your recruitment into our little family." Clint tried again to get his feet underneath him, but without the actual help of either arm he was aimlessly struggling to pull himself upright. "I need a sharpshooter." Peter grabbed the cuff around Clint's left hand. "So far, I've found no indication that you've joined some sort of a secret agent club so I'm buying your 'time off' story for now."

The blood around Clint's wrist gave Peter some trouble prying the cuff off his hand once it was unlocked. Peter forced the issue and Clint bit his lip as the blood started flowing from his reopened wounds.

Peter waved his hand and Clint found himself suddenly sitting in an awkward pile on the ground when the chain holding up his right arm was drastically lowered. As Peter squatted in front of him and patted the cuff still locked around Clint's right wrist.

"I'm going off your quite impressive reputation, Mr. Barton. Jake has vouched for your skills in the field, but should you accept this job know that I will be keeping a very, very close eye on you."

Peter slid his other hand over and pinched Clint's dislocated shoulder. "So think carefully, because if you fail - " He squeezed the unaligned joint and Clint had to suppress a shout of pain, "You will feel my wrath."

"Un…under…stood." Clint managed through ground teeth. He fell backwards when Peter let go of his shoulder and tried not to moan when the motion was restricted by a familiar tug of his still chained wrist.

Peter stood up and looked down on Clint where he lay soaked in days of his own sweaty torment and piss. Clint could only look back with his one eye at the feral man standing over him. "Welcome, Mr. Barton. братствуюстиції"

Clint did moan when he felt a familiar pinch in his neck and the swift lull of unconsciousness. Clint didn't speak Ukrainian, but the Ukrainian language shared aspects with Russian and unfortunately the only word he recognized was 'brotherhood'. He had no idea how he was going to get out of this one.

* * *

Author's Note - Yes this is a very short chapter. I'm sorry. I promise the next one is not.


	7. Flying Without Wings

When Clint awoke he found himself in a small room no bigger than the average bathroom. He lay still for a moment as he felt his body recovering from the overly familiar feeling of paralysis. If there were permanent side affects from this much exposure to Peter's happy drug, he was going to go postal on the place.

Once his body felt like it might actually play along with the direction of his brain, Clint maneuvered himself upright and leaned against the cold metal wall alongside the thin bed he was on.

The room was sparse and with nothing but a weak uncomfortable bed, a toilet, and small sink. Clint was definitely getting the prison cell vibe. He took a moment to inspect the various bandages applied to his wounds. It looked like a butcher had wrapped him up for all the medical standards the doctor appeared to have followed.

His hand came up gingerly to his swollen left eye. He was still unable to open it and without a mirror it would be hard to diagnose how bad the damage was or when it would fade. Someone had reset his shoulder and when Clint tested the range of motion, he had to grimace. It wasn't going to be easy working as a sharpshooter for Peter in this condition.

For a moment he contemplated falling back over and sleeping until he was actually dead. But somehow Peter must have known he was awake for there was a pounding on the door that echoed in the small room and reverberated through Clint's skull.

He heard the distinct sound of the door being unlocked. Definitely a prisoner then. Peter and two other goons stood in the doorway. "Hope you're decent. Got a job."

They led him through the base to the armory and let Clint pick out his own sniper rifle from their collection. He wasn't allowed any other weapons and they denied him the opportunity for ammo with the promise he would get some on site.

"You know you've beat me enough I can't guarantee this shot is going to go the way you want it. Hard to brace against a dislocated shoulder."

"Well you better make sure you figure it out then." With a shove, they pushed Clint into the back of their van and within moments the group was off to their destination.

As Clint settled into the back of the van, he tried to wrap his left hand around the barrel of the gun. His three fingers were taped together with some sort of splint to keep them from bending. That combined with the loss of his left eye meant he was going to have to take the shot right handed. There was enough mobility left in his thumb and forefinger that he would be able to stabilize the rifle if needed.

When the van came to an abrupt halt, Clint watched the others around him before following them out. Jake grabbed the collar of his shirt and pulled him away from the group.

"Goddammit, Jake. We used to work together."

Jake smirked. "I know. That's why I'm the one that's going to watch you on this one." The other man jerked a finger down the alley. "We're that way. Got your perch all picked out for you, Hawkeye."

"You know that's not how I usually work." He growled as he slung the rifle over his shoulder.

"It is today."

The two walked in silence for several blocks keeping to the shadows the whole way until they came upon a fire escape. With a gesture from Jake, Clint started climbing. They were sixteen floors up when Jake stopped and busted one of the windows adjoining the fire escape.

"This is us." Jake climbed through the window and Clint followed like a dutiful puppy through the darkened office building. When they reached the other side of the building Jake squatted and cut a hole in the glass with a portable laser cutter. "Here you go. Work your magic."

"I still don't have any ammo."

Jake dug into his cargo pant pocket and shoved a handful of ammo into Clint's outstretched hand. "You shoot any of our guys, I'll cut off your balls."

He rolled his good eye as he started loading the rifle. "Awww, Jakey, I didn't know you cared."

"Getting out of the game for a couple of years now makes a man wonder where you went and why." The other man leaned back against a desk, his fingers twitching over his pistol. "Besides, heard some big government agency got themselves a pretty good sharpshooter."

Clint squatted down and balanced the gun in the freshly cut hole in the window. "I'm not the only sharpshooter in the world, Jake." He scanned the lively streets below them. The streets were filled with the local nightlife of individuals on their way to various restaurants or clubs. "Who is my target?"

Jake took out a cigarette and lit it up. "There should be a girl. Brunette, I think. About five foot maybe?"

He scanned the area noting a few of the men who had been in the van but no girl who he could be sure matched the poor intel he was just given. "Negative."

"You sure about that?"

"You asking if I know how to do my job, Jake?"

"Just if you know what it is, Buttercup."

Clint scowled and took his eye away from the scope to glare at Jake. "Call me that again and I'll make sure you get one of these right in the eye."

Jake laughed, nearly falling from the desk with the force. He waved the cigarette at Clint to get his focus back on the window. Clint turned back to his scope and scanned the scene again, a couple of brunettes. Some were shorter, but others were making up the difference with heels.

"I need more to go on here. I'm not shooting just anyone."

"She's a hooker. She will have some hard drive or something she's selling. If she'd taken our offer, she could have kept her life." Jake took a drag on his cigarette. "You take her out, and our guys get the drive and run. Easy." Jake's cigarette smoke wisped and curled against the back of Clint's head.

A girl stepped out of a building matching the appropriate description and Clint trained his sight on her. "I might have her."

"Excellent. Kill her."

Clint didn't dare spare a moment to glance away again. "How do I know it's her? I'm not killing the wrong girl."

Jake snorted. "I knew it. You've gone soft."

"No." Clint growled back. "We get one shot at this. The second I open fire into a crowded place everything goes haywire. God, what kind of a shoddy operation you guys running here?"

Movement behind him as Jake stepped up to the window with a pair of binoculars. "What's she wearing?"

"Green dress, sleeveless. Ten o'clock." Clint did a brief scan of the area around her. "Maybe being tailed by a body guard. Blue jacket, on her seven."

"How fast can you take em both?"

"If you really gotta ask me that then you obviously don't recall that time I saved your ass in Cairo." Clint set his crosshairs on the bodyguard. "There are too many civilians. It's not a clean shot."

He felt Jake's pistol press against his back between his shoulder blades. "You don't have a choice."

"Fine." Clint pressed the stock of the rifle back into his shoulder painfully. "Who do you want taken out first?"

"The girl. Can't get away with the harddrive if she's dead."

He altered the crosshairs back to the girl who had stopped to flirt with a potential customer. The customer's girlfriend came up and angrily dragged the man away. Clint let out a slow breath as he trailed the girl with his crosshairs perfectly aligned over her heart.

As he took the shot, a drunken group of men burst forth from the bar she was passing, one of them pushing into her and knocking her off course. Clint snarled as the bullet went through her right arm instead. He quickly whipped his sight back to the bodyguard who moved a lot faster than Clint had anticipated and was already down behind a trashcan firing back up at his window. "Shit." Clint ducked to the side as the window shattered around him. "We've been made."

"Wow. Thanks for the update." Jake grabbed the back of Clint's neck and shoved him eye first into his scope. "Get the damn target."

He readjusted his grip and squinted into the scope again. The bodyguard had ducked down to reload and Clint could just make out the tip of his boot from behind the trashcan. As the man leaned out to fire again, Clint stopped him dead in his tracks with a clean shot between the eyes. "Bodyguard down."

"And the girl?"

The area had mostly cleared of civilians and Clint had no trouble spotting where she had fallen and what looked to be like her blood on the pavement. "Negative. Mark is lost."

"Check again." Jake growled from behind him.

He didn't have to check again to know he wasn't going to find her but he scanned the area regardless. "Negative. Area clear. Mark is lost. Mission failed." Clint pulled his gun up from the window and stood. As he turned towards Jake he was met with a fist to the face that sent him recoiling against the wall and nearly out the window. "The fuck?!"

Jake leveled the pistol at Clint's head. "Give me the rifle, Barton."

Clint tossed him the rifle before pinching the bridge of his now broken nose. "That was not my fault. I told you, too many civilians!"

Jake jerks his pistol back the way they came. "We'll see what Peter thinks of that."

They quickly made their way down to the ground floor and back towards the van where the other guys were gathering. A young, chubby kid came jogging up to join the group excited. If Clint had to guess it was one of his first missions with the team, Damien or something if memory served.

_"That was awesome. This is great_!" The kid smacked Clint on the shoulder. "_Did you see how they ran everywhere? I punched like four of them! Serves em right, yeah?"_

"Ha ha ha" Clint forced a laugh as he pushed past Jake and Damian to get in to the van. "_Best job ever_." He could only hope the sarcasm didn't come through in Russian.


	8. Birds of a Feather

The ride back to their base was uncomfortable enough without Clint's nose bleeding all over the place. He struggled to rip bits off the edge of his shirt and couldn't get the fabric to tear all the way. "Any yous guys gotta knife?" The others in the van ignored him in favor of celebrating with Damian and so Clint let the blood flow down his chin where it was bound to stick in the light beard growth he'd been unintentionally growing over the last several days in captivity.

They took him straight to his room and locked him in when they got back, no doubt going to discuss what to do with him since he, apparently, was the reason the mission was botched so royally. He took the only clean towel he had and pressed it to his face before laying down on the meager cot and waiting for the blood to stop flowing.

He must have fallen asleep because when he next opened his eyes, Peter was standing over him looking none too pleased. "I was told you were the best there was."

Clint shifted the towel on his face so he could talk to Peter unobstructed. "And I told you that my injuries might complicate things. Not to mention the sheer number of civilians at the site."

Peter pulls a knife from his pocket and Clint's eye darts towards it. "Such trivial things shouldn't be a problem for the _best_." Peter looked down Clint's bed, the knife twirling in his fingers. "You're in luck that the body guard was the one with the hard drive. Otherwise I might truly kill you."

As the knife was suddenly driven into Clint's left thigh, Clint was only thankful for the lack of happy serum coursing through his veins at that moment.

"I heard you needed a knife earlier." Peter turned back to the door, leaving the knife sticking out of Clint's thigh. "Next time try not to complicate things for me."

At the sound of the door latching, Clint let out a muffled sob of pain before reaching forward and weakly trying to pull the knife free from his leg.

* * *

Phil was going over the final details of Natasha's next cover when a sporadic knocking came at his office door. "Yes?"

"Agent Coulson, Sir. There's something you need to see." He recognized it as the voice of Bradley, the relatively new level 2 agent assigned to communications if his memory served.

"Come in."

The freckle faced agent hesitantly opened the door and stepped up to Phil's desk. "The Fire Drive mission was a failure, Sir."

"Why are you telling me? That was Sitwell's agent and thus, Sitwell's mission." Phil didn't bother to look up from his paperwork.

Agent Bradley clutched a folder in his hands and shifted. It probably wasn't often he was away from his communication station. "The seller was taken out before they reached the rendezvous, Sir. A sniper."

Phil folded his hands on his desk and looked up at the nervous agent. "What does that have to do with me, Agent Bradley?"

"Witnesses on site spotted some thugs going through the deceased's clothes. It appears our buy was intercepted." Bradley opened the folder in his hands, straightening the pages as if it were some sort of nervous tic. "We were able to trace the thugs for a distance via local surveillance and we…"

Phil sighed heavily. "I have a tickets to the game tonight, Agent. So if you'll please."

"We believe we've located Agent Barton." He handed Phil the folder now. " Uhm. Sir."

Phil took the folder and flipped it open. Inside the front cover was a series of photos of a dark van and several men getting in to it. One of the men had a sniper rifle slung over his shoulder and appeared to be escorting an injured, but laughing, Agent Barton. "Where was this taken?"

"We got it off a security feed outside Volgograd, Sir."

Phil pulled open his drawer of active case files and grabbed Clint's folder. As he flipped through the background information he'd had on the Montoya family, he couldn't see any connection at all that would explain Clint's sudden appearance in Russia. But the timestamp on the photo was clear. His agent was more AWOL than Phil thought. Agent Bradley shifted awkwardly in front of him.

"Thank you, Agent. You're dismissed." He flipped through the images as Bradley took his leave. "What the hell are you doing, Barton?"

Within seconds there was another, knock on his door. "What is it now, Agent?" He glanced up from the papers expecting to see Agent Bradley returned and was instead greeted with the unhappy face of Director Fury. "Director Fury, Sir."

"Coulson." Fury crossed the office swiftly and sat in front of Phil's desk. The papers Agent Bradley had just given him were still sprawled across the top of the table. Fury looked down at the file, could clearly see the photo of Barton on top. "I see you've heard the news."

"It was just delivered." Phil started reaching to gather the papers to him. "Sir if I could put together a rescue mission, take Romanoff and Agent –"

"Coulson." Phil didn't like the tone Fury used to cut him off with. "I can't authorize a rescue for a deserter."

Phil froze, his hand still outstretched over the table. "What are you saying?"

"We've had facial recognition software running on every security camera in Mexico since he first went missing. Now all the sudden he turns up in Russia. Takes a shot at our seller, murders her security and gets away with our intel."

"He's not working alone." Phil turns the picture towards Fury.

"I know. I've seen the images." Fury stands and places his hands on the back of the guest chair. "That's why I wanted to tell you this in person. Before you read the report."

"Tell me what." Phil didn't really need to ask. He knew the protocol. Knew what had to happen next. But if there was anyway he could delay the inevitable…

"Agent Clint Barton has abandoned his post, is in league with the enemy and has stolen classified information."

"Director." Phil looked again at the picture in front of him. "You know Barton would never."

"But the fact is he did, Phil. He somehow got halfway around the world and still hasn't even bothered to phone in. He's gone off the deep end."

"Nick. Don't. There's got to be a reason."

"We've got to officially call it, Phil. Until I see some evidence to the contrary. Clint Barton is a traitor to SHIELD."


	9. Trouble in Paradise

Clint was ignored for nearly three days aside from the occasional meal brought to his room. Prison style food left just inside his door before he woke up each morning. His leg was stiff and without some sort of antibiotics it was fairly likely he'd develop an infection or maggots or something equally nasty.

The small room was quiet, not enough activity happened on the other side of his door and it wasn't at al unlikely that they'd forgotten him. Not that Clint was complaining. Better to be forgotten where he could lay down than forgotten strung up by his wrists. And at least they were bringing him food.

The knocking at the door startled him, and Clint figured it was a good sign they were knocking. He limped over to the doorway and was surprised to see Peter himself standing in the doorway. "How many languages do you speak, Mr. Barton?"

Clint shifted on his good leg. "Fluently? Seven. Well enough to get by? Five more."

"French in that repertoire?"

"Of course."

"Great. I've got a deal going down with a French woman and I need someone who can read the deal like you did on the Mexico buy in case things go sideways." Clint caught the fresh clothes that were thrown at him. "Get decent. You're going to act as my personal bodyguard. Think you can handle that?"

"You include me in the pre planning this time and I promise you nothing goes wrong."

Peter smiled and for a moment Clint had hope that he could prevent another sideways mission that would lead to his own death. "Alright. I'll grant you that."

He followed Peter down the hall towards a conference room he'd never been in before. Clint had been happy to see Jake sporting a fresh black eye. Apparently he wasn't the only one in trouble for the complications on the last mission.

He scanned the room, taking in the pathetic computers setup that most SHIELD agent's probably had in their basements at age 10. It seemed to be getting the job done however and on the computer along the wall Clint briefly managed to see "10,032" and what looked to be the Ukrainian word for death before he was guided to a table to discuss the upcoming exchange.

The plan was simple. Arrive at the agreed upon location, exchange and depart.

* * *

Clint Barton was not a fan of simple.

There was very little intelligence on the woman they were trading with except that she was known to accept a substitute payment of money for a payment of sex instead. This reason alone was why Peter wanted to go in personally.

Clint wasn't given a gun, a fact he lamented as he stood defensively behind Peter at the door of an upscale hotel. Peter knocked briskly in the prearranged pattern.

"Bonjour, Monsieur….s?" The beautiful voice that Clint would recognize anywhere – even behind a fake French accent – faltered as the door whooshed open.

"Madame. I trust we're not too late for you." Peter walked into the room past Natasha and Clint had to force himself to remain stoic so as not to give himself or Natasha away.

"Oh, non! Not at all." He could feel her eyes on him as he walked stiffly across the room. They had been partners for too long and he knew she could read him like a book. "Can I get you a drink, Monsieur?" The offer of a drink to his boss made Clint even more aware of his own thirst, but it wasn't his place to even think about that.

"No, no. Just the briefcase."

She padded across the room barefoot and leaned against the desk. "And the payment?"

"Fifteen. As negotiated."

"We negotiated twenty."

"I'll pay fifteen." Clint took his cue to pull the envelope from his jacket and hand it to Peter.

He watched as Natasha faked a pout and drooped one shoulder to allow the strap to fall free around her arm. Her eyelashes fluttered seductively and Clint could only adjust his stance as he watched. "Fifteen then, but only if you personally make up the difference."

"I've heard you prefer to take your payments by more…unconventional means." As Peter began to remove his jacket and shirt, Clint suddenly realized that he didn't know what Natasha's mission was and had no way of communicating everything he needed to with her without blowing things for both of them. "I'm sure I can make it up to you."

"What about your friend?" He didn't know what Natasha had been told about his mission. But the Mexico assignment was so far in his rearview mirror that he was pretty sure he would have been declared either dead or MIA. Natasha however apparently had no orders to bring him in as she whispered into her mark's ear. "I prefer not to be watched by strange men when getting my payment…"

Peter was gently pushed back from Natasha and Clint could just make out her dress falling to the floor where she wiggled out of it. "He stays. Barton, the door."

Clint was glad for something to do so he wouldn't have to see the betrayal he knew would be on Natasha's face at the realization that he was using his real name. He stepped back to the front door and slid the security chain across. For a minute he stood there listening to Peter plant kisses on Natasha before turning back to take up his guard post.

Clint tried not to watch as Peter hefted Natasha up on to the desk, but after countless missions watching Nat's back he was trained never to take his eyes off her. As Peter started to grind his pants against Natasha, Clint actively had to remind himself what was at stake. If he blew it for either of them then whatever Peter was going to do to kill ten thousand people would easily come to pass. He swallowed and grit his teeth as Peter kept kissing Natasha. Never before had he been required to watch her work quite so close.

Natasha wrapped her legs around Peter, eliciting an animalistic groan out of the man when suddenly Natasha was slamming her forehead against Peter's and pushing both of them away from the desk.

Peter spilled onto the floor as Natasha continued in a tight roll and reached under the coffee table to pull free whatever she'd placed there earlier. Her back was to him in a way Clint knew she would only have done with someone she was trusting completely.

He spared only a moment to look between his partner and his current and very unofficial mission. But from what he had seen during that brief planning meeting, if he strayed from his new personally assigned mission, it was likely that over ten thousand people were going to die. Natasha would forgive him. Assuming he ever got the opportunity to explain and she didn't just flat out kill him for punching her in the head.

Natasha tumbled sideways and although Clint knew that hit was fairly hard she was up and ready to go. Her eyes narrowed at him and he knew she wanted an explanation for botching her mission.

Hiding his emotions, Clint started in on her face, a tactic he never used on her in training and something she wouldn't be prepared for. She used to tease him about not going after her face because he liked to look at it. Only one punch met its mark before Natasha was kicking him right in the fairly fresh stab wound in his leg.

Clint stumbled back with a grunt. Of course she would have noticed that, she wasn't stupid. But maybe he was to think she couldn't read every movement of his body. Peter needed to get that file and if Natasha didn't let them get it, Peter and the six other goonies standing by if their buy went haywire were going to come in and kill Nat.

In order to save his partner's life he had no choice but to betray her. She started throwing punches again, clearly pulling them like they would in training exercises but Clint couldn't do that. She always bested him in training, hand to hand was her forte not his. He put his full weight behind his punches, catching her off guard.

It was only a moment of scuffling before he had hold of her right wrist and in a move he'd learned from Nat herself was spinning her around and pinning the arm up behind her back painfully. He kicked out her left leg and wrapped his right leg around hers. She tried to elbow him with her free left arm and Clint caught the arm and pinned it across her body, completely immobilizing her.

From the floor, Peter began to chuckle as he dusted himself off. Clint picked up the handcuffs from where they'd landed on the dresser and cuffed Natasha's left arm to the bathroom doorknob, a feat that proved difficult while still keeping Natasha's left wrist from getting free. She didn't seem to be fighting him too much either because she trusted he had a plan or she was worried he might pop her shoulder out of its socket from where it was pinned.

"Now you see, Madame DuBois, why I keep him around." Peter picked himself up still laughing at their scuffle. "The briefcase?"

Natasha made a weak attempt to pull free of his grip before sagging against his body in mock defeat. Clint had to bite his tongue to keep his mind off how she felt pressed against him. "Under the bed." Her voice laced with false disappointment.

As Peter stepped away to retrieve it Clint felt the angle of Natasha's head move slightly up towards his, her hair tickling his exposed collarbone. "Clint? What's going on?" He wasn't able to meet her gaze on account of his swollen eye and frankly he was thankful for it because he didn't think he could stand to look her in the eye right now.

He squeezed a pressure point on her wrist and she shut up as Peter returned. "I can see based on its location, you had been expecting a more enjoyable evening…But handcuffs and all that other bondage stuff isn't my style."

Clint took the moment it took Peter to lumber across the room to tap a Morse code message into Natasha's wrist. Although Natasha had always been shit with Morse code, he could only hope to hell that she'd realize what he was doing let alone understood.

"So you're fine with the agreed upon fifteen then?" Peter stopped in front of them, his eyes raking up and down Natasha's exposed body.

"It doesn't appear you're giving me much of a choice." She hissed back while Peter caressed her side with lust in his eyes.

"Shame, really. We could have had such fun."

"I told you I don't like audiences." Peter's hand lingered for a moment on the waistband of Natasha's lacy "work" underwear.

"Clint, I don't think I want to kill her…if we run into her again she may be fun to have around." Peter slapped Natasha's butt playfully. "But do make things difficult."

As Peter walked away, Clint quickly calculated his options and as much as he hated to do it the best choice was her wrist. With a force he never again wanted to use against Natasha, he snapped the bone in her wrist and released her in one swift movement.

She cried out in pain as she dropped to her knees and had it been any other mission, Clint would have been busting the door down to murder the man causing such pain to his partner. As it was, this was the only way he could save her.

* * *

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** Sorry folks, it looks like this is as far as I can take you for a while. I've got to go out of town and I will be unable to post. The story IS completely finished (to the tune of 35k) and as soon as I'm back It will be a daily posting party! In the meantime, feel free to leave some love.


	10. Hit the Ground Running

**Author's Note:** Hello folks! I have returned! If I'm jet lagged it hasn't hit me yet, but 52 hours of traveling is a crazy long time to be on airplanes and various vehicles!

As promised, here is the next chapter and every chapter yet to come will be posted promptly. Like I said already the story is already complete.

Enjoy and thanks all for the reviews!

* * *

Clint managed to make it back to their plane before he found himself on his knees crammed in the small stall of an airplane toilet and vomiting. Natasha's cry had been the only sound ringing in his ears since he'd left her half hanging from the doorknob in her undergarments.

His leg hurt like hell, but as he dry heaved into the bowl, it didn't matter. "Oh god." He moaned as he curled against the wall, exhausted. "Nat. I'm sorry." Her scream continued to echo in his head in a tormenting loop accompanied only by the sound of her bones snapping in his hands.

He lay there in pain, knowing that his lack of comfort was deserved for what he had just done to Natasha. It seemed like hours until there was a pounding at the door. The pounding grew louder and he could hear his name mixed in between the bangs so he forced himself to find his feet and slowly pulled himself upright. His left leg was having trouble holding him again after the kick Natasha had delivered to it.

There was just enough time to splash his face with water to remove the tracks of the few tears that had spilled while he was down before he fumbled for the lock on the door.

He pulled the door open and promptly received a punch in the gut for his trouble. "The hell you making me wait for, Barton?" Peter spat at him. Clint straightened up and squared his shoulders as Peter circled him. "That was well played back at the drop site. Too bad that Marie made a move though, you could have gotten a show." He fought to keep his fists from visibly clenching at the way Peter spoke of Natasha. She was his partner. "But hey, mission still came out so now we've got an assignment for you."

"Anything, sir."

Peter pulled him out of the small bathroom and back to a seat on the jet. "We're going to land shortly and I've got another mission I need you on immediately."

He shifted his weight to alleviate the pain in his leg. "Is there time for medical attention?"

"Wasn't that what you just spent an hour in the bathroom doing?"

Clint nodded and sat across from Peter. "What's the mission?"

"I need you to take the briefcase we got from that whore to an outpost in Russia. We've got a contact out there waiting for you." Peter took some files from the briefcase and handed the case to Clint. "His compatriots will not appreciate seeing you, however."

The second they had landed in Volgograd and refueled, Clint was back in the air on his way to his next assignment. The back-to-back flights were more than Clint's sore muscles were up for and the limiting confines of the airplane didn't help. He needed room to stretch and get himself back at one hundred percent but when the pilot informed him he was less than twenty minutes out, Clint knew he'd have to make do with some basic stretching in the back of the turbulent airplane.

"The storm is too bad, I can't put her down."

"Peter isn't going to wait for another go at this." Clint roared back at the pilot, disgusted the man hadn't checked the weather conditions.

"You'll have to jump."

"You've got to be shitting me." He could see the inclement weather through the window at his seat. "That's suicide."

"Would you rather I brought you back to Peter?"

For a moment Clint weighed the option, but with the injuries he'd already sustained for stupid small stuff, he was pretty sure Peter would flat out kill him especially given that Clint wasn't even allowed a stop at medical before leaving on this fool's errand.

He was better off taking his chances out there in the snowstorm. "No," he growled back as he scooped up a pack and strapped it on his back and the briefcase to his chest. "I'm good."

The back hatch was only open a few seconds before Clint took a running jump into the cold with the hope that it wouldn't be the last moments of his life.

Clint hadn't made jumping out of planes a habit. It reminded him too much of that time he fell off the trapeze and broke both his legs. The snow certainly didn't add to the enjoyment of an already unlikable event as the cold wind whipped his body and his chute about.

It took all his effort to keep the chute from collapsing in the wind before Clint's body was buried a foot and a half deep in soft powder. It was fairly tempting to stay there, face first in the snow, his chute billowing up behind him each time it caught a gust of wind. Frostbite however was not something Clint wanted to add to his medical history.

It took him several tries to pack the snow down enough to get a view over the top of the Clint sized hole he'd created. "Shit. I'm gonna die out here." Every direction he looked was essentially prairie. No trees to cut branches from and create snowshoes. Nowhere to tuck out of the cold until the storm passed.

He sank back down into the cold and wrapped the chute around him for an added layer of warmth while he took stock of the situation. By his calculations he was at least six miles from the office building his contact was in. The distance would have been nothing in normal circumstances. But Clint and normal had never been on speaking terms.

The only tool he had was the knife that had been in his leg only a few days prior. ,Clint pulled it out now and quickly cut several of the cords free from his chute. He used the remaining cords to tie the fabric to him. It would have made a pretty quirky cape given different situations.

He busted open the briefcase he'd strapped to his chest, took out the files and stuffed them in to his shirt. As much as he didn't want to get a paper cut on his nipples, he knew trudging through several feet of snow with an injured leg would be even less fun.

Breaking the briefcase apart was harder than he wanted to admit, but eventually he found himself standing on the snow with each foot firmly tied in to a half of the briefcase. It was going to be a long walk but at least he was on top of the snow now.

It wasn't until Clint was halfway through a half basement window of his target building that the weather showed any sign of letting up. "Figures" he muttered as he pushed the thin window back into place behind him.

The office building was only marginally warmer, but at least he didn't have the howling wind cutting across his exposed skin any longer. As he rubbed his hands together and blew against his palms for warmth he looked around to determine where to find his contact. With his knife at the ready, Clint started systematically sweeping the building.

It took two floors and half an hour before he came in contact with another individual. Fortunately, the cleaning crew guy had his radio on quite loud, and Clint was able to easily evade him.

The man he was looking for apparently had an office so Clint let himself in and took stock of the small office. It was meager, but comfortable. A single guest chair and a light bookcase with several books on nanotechnology Clint was sure the SHIELD techs would love to read if they weren't all in Russian.

Clint found an extra scarf hanging in a small closet behind the door and decided he might as well borrow it until the morning when his contact, Daniill, would be back.

Sleeping on ops was never recommended, but Clint knew if he didn't get some shuteye he'd probably be off his game. So he settled down in the closet and out of sight of the door for a nap.


	11. Every Rose Has Its Thorn

**Author's Note**: Sorry folks, on account of jet lag I fell asleep last night before I could post this chapter. I hope the chapter makes it up to you!

* * *

Clint awoke to the sounds of a key in a lock and forced his stiff limbs into a standing position. Daniill could be heard stripping his hat, scarf and coat but didn't immediately open the closet to store them. With his ear pressed against the thin door, Clint listened to the man's weight cause his desk chair to creak as he sat and booted up his computer.

The rest of the room sounded empty.

When Clint pushed the door open, the man didn't even look up from his computer and Clint hesitated. Usually when he got this close to someone they noticed, and given his foul stench from hiking across the snow covered prairie he was pretty sure the man should have noticed.

"Ahem." Clint cleared his throat.

Daniill still didn't look up. _"I'm not taking meetings today. Please schedule another visit."_ The man's Russian was thicker than Clint usually encountered, but fortunately still intelligible.

_"Yeah. That's not really an option."_ He stepped forward and pulled out the guest chair at the man's desk. _"See I came a long way through some pretty shitty obstacles so I think you'll have to see me."_

This time Daniill did look up. _"American?"_

Clint blinked, he'd perfected his Russian and he knew it.

"_What is an American doing so far from home?"_

With a shrug Clint pulled the file out of his shirt and threw it on the desk in front of the man. "_Here to bring you this."_

The man flipped through the file while Clint took the moment to sit and massage the sore muscles in his leg.

A single page was held up in front of Clint. "_What is this?"_

_"Hell if I know, man. I'm just here to drop and get some thumb drive."_

The man nodded stiffly and then reached into the top drawer of his desk. "_You know the repercussions of something like this?" _The drawer apparently had a false bottom, something Clint hadn't bothered to check for on his sweep earlier. "_Something like this could destroy the world."_

_"What are you talking about? We're taking out some gang or corrupt –"_ Clint waved his hand in the air. Truth be told he didn't really know what the target was and a gang or corrupt business wouldn't end up with over ten thousand dead.

Daniill scrubbed a hand across his face. _"This project was never supposed to go this far. People weren't supposed to die."_ His eyes flicked to a family portrait on the bookcase - a smiling young girl with her father, Daniill.

"_They've been lying to me?"_

_"Probably."_ The man's hand remains in the desk drawer. "_Are you going to kill me?"_

Clint balked at that. "_No. I'm here to drop this file and get your confirmation that everything is done."_

As Daniill pulled a gun from his desk drawer and pointed it at him, Clint realized why he watched from a distance; micro expressions weren't second nature for him to read, but guns being pointed at people were and he preferred to be far away when they were pointed. His knife was tucked into his boot and was unfortunately the only weapon Clint had.

"_So I gather you're no longer on Peter's side then?" _He leaned back on his chair with a forced air of nonchalance. Although he didn't really want to get shot he'd learned from Natasha that keeping cool in these situations was best.

_"This is a virus in the nanorobot industry. It will spread everywhere and thousands could die. Mostly Russian. But why would American scum such as yourself care about that?"_

_"Yes I obviously don't care about Russia. That's why I went to all this trouble to learn your incredibly difficult language."_

_"No doubt a girl was involved." _Daniill smirked, the gun now lowered but still pointed at Clint.

_"Oh yeah, I just adore those little nesting girls. How they all – pop, pop, pop" _He mimed putting the nesting dolls inside each other. "_How are a bunch of tiny robots going to kill people? It doesn't seem all that dangerous to me."_

"_Nanorobotics is a blossoming industry. It is starting to be used in medicine and our company is building our business on the development and programming of Nanorobots. We have taken thousands of contracts across our many facilities._

_"I still don't see lil bitty robots killing nobody."_

"_Medical technology."_ Daniill shifted forward on his seat, seemingly forgetting that he was threatening Clint with the gun as he began waving it around. "_Imagine thousands of tiny robots fighting a child's cancer or performing non evasive surgery on an unborn fetus who would otherwise have died from birth complications. Now imagine one man has the power to jump in and reprogram these robots at will. Anywhere in the world."_

Clint knew the answer,_"People die." _Daniill looked at the photo again - child cancer. Clint had a feeling this was personal.

_"And our company gets discredited and goes out of business, thousands lose their jobs. Jobs that barely keep them afloat. Jobs they will starve to death without. More people die."_

_"How many?"_ Clint needed to know how serious this was.

_"Ten thousand, easy."_

The number didn't surprise him. It was close to what Peter had calculated. _"How close is he?"_

Daniill looked back at the folder. "_Close. He wants me to program his coding in to our database. This coding will do exactly what he wants it to do."_

_"And if you don't?"_

_"I thought you were the incentive?" _The gun is raised again, pointed towards his face once more.

Clint crossed his right leg across his left, the knife finally in a position he could get to if needed. "_I'm just a delivery boy."_

_"Peter no longer has his leverage over me, I won't do it. And for you I am prepared to do what I must to survive." _The safety came off the gun then.

"_I don't want to hurt you."_ Clint looked the man in the eyes and saw fear.

_"You're going to hurt thousands if I don't stop you. I can't stomach the idea that more parents -"_ Danill steadied the gun with his other hand and Clint had to act fast or never again.

He kicked off the desk and toppled his own chair backwards as the gun went off. In the same move he managed to pull the knife from his boot and once his somersault was complete he popped into a crouch and hurled his knife and only weapon directly at the man.

The knife soared mere millimeters above the gun and embedded itself in the man's right shoulder. The impact caused the gun to go off a second time, but Daniill's shot went wide as the man cried out.

Clint rolled towards the desk, grunting from the pain it put on his leg and took cover just under the lip where his feet had been previously.

The sound of the gun's muzzle being placed point down on the top of the desk made Clint's eye go wide. He'd shot enough things to know shooting through wood at that proximity would not be good for either of them.

He leaned back on his wrists and quickly planted both feet on the kickboard of the desk and gave it a good shove towards the man, slamming the desk into the other's gut and pushing both him and the chair against the wall.

The gun clattered first off the desk and then onto Clint's stomach. One problem down.

Clint stood and brushed himself off before tucking the gun into the back of his pants. The knife was still embedded in Daniill's shoulder as the man tried in vain to lift the desk off himself from the awkward position.

_"I don't want to kill you."_

With his left hand he reached to pull the knife free and Daniill took the opportunity to clasp his chubby fingers around Clint's three broken ones and squeeze. He grunted from the pain of his fingers being pushed together against the hilt of his knife.

"_I'm not going to help you."_ Daniill used his grip on Clint's broken hand to pull the knife from his shoulder but refused to release him. "_I'd rather die."_

And then his hand was being forced, knife and all, across the man's jugular.


	12. Coffee Break

"Shit! Shit! Shit!"

Clint couldn't pull the knife away fast enough to avoid the gush of blood that surged forth from the deep cut into Daniill's neck. The blood kept coming and Clint was reminded again why he did this sort of thing from a distance.

A loud banging on the door suddenly made itself known as Danniill's coworkers realized what they heard were in fact gunshots. A woman bashed opened the door.

"I can explain!" Clint held up the knife in his bloodied hand. "Shit, speak Russian!" He put both hands up in the air as if she had a gun on him. _"I didn't do it."_

_"CALL THE POLICE!" _The woman's voice bellowed down the hallway.

To be fair, he didn't expect her to want to talk it out as blood still gurgled forth from Daniill's neck. More people could be heard shouting down the hall and Clint didn't want to start fighting his way through a mob of angry Russian office workers. Of course spending time for murder in a Russian prison was not at the top of his to do list either.

_"I'm sorry!"_ He turned and scooped up what files he could from the folder he'd brought and threw himself straight through the still closed second story window.

He had done enough jumps and falls that he was able to tuck and roll just without cutting himself up with the bloodied knife still gripped in his hand. The blood was going to leave an entirely traceable trail behind him in the snow and with the sounds of the woman still screaming from the window he awkwardly trudged towards what appeared to be an employee parking lot of sorts and frantically started looking for a vehicle he could hotwire.

He found an older model truck with the door already unlocked. As he fumbled around for the ignition switch wires, he couldn't prevent the blood on his hand from leaving grotesque smears across the pristine grey of the dash and steering wheel. There was more shouting behind him and within moments he'd fired up the truck and was blasting out of town.

While Clint was used to not having an extraction in place, the total shit storm of a mission was not his standard performance despite what Natasha might say. Getting anywhere was going to be difficult and doubly so when he was covered in blood and driving a stolen truck.

He pulled into the parking lot of the first coffee shop he came across. He quickly wiped the remaining blood from the knife on the seat and tucked it back into his boot. He then turned his coat inside out to hide the blood that had been steadily drying on his sleeve.

Getting his hands clean was going to be harder. As he jumped out of the truck, Clint shoved his left hand deep into his pocket and quickly made his way into the coffee shop. It was a small blessing the bathroom was unoccupied and Clint stripped his jacket and started frantically scrubbing at the blood coating his left hand.

The tape wrapped around his broken fingers was soaked, it was going to be impossible to get it cleaned off and semi presentable. His best option was going to be to redo the tape -which he did not have the materials for.

With a wince, Clint forced the tape off of his fingers. They still weren't healed but it was the only way to get them clean. The blood soaked tape joined his jacket in the trash. As public coffee shop restrooms were apt to be, Clint was not at all surprised that the soap dispenser was not only busted but laughably empty. In fact it didn't look as if it had ever held soap. This of course only complicated his ability to get the blood off his hands.

There was a knock at the door that escalated to pounding much faster than seemed reasonable but Clint opted to ignore it as he frantically tried to get the blood out from under his nails.

"_Open up. You take too long!"_ The angry male voice on the other side of the door shouted at him.

His arm was practically rubbed raw where he had scrubbed it, but a first glance wouldn't flag any attention so it would be safe enough to go out into the coffee shop. Without his jacket however, the weather outside was going to be a lot more complicated.

"_Yeah. Yeah."_ Clint pulled open the door and glared at the man standing in front of him. _"Let a man shit in peace, would ya?"_ The man shoved Clint shoulder first into the doorframe as he pushed past and Clint grunted at the jarring of his shoulder on the corner.

It wouldn't be wise to pick a fight now and with a deep breath Clint stepped back out into the main area of the coffee shop and pretended to study the menu as he surveyed his surroundings.

A woman sat alone at a table, a coat was draped over the chair across from her – a suspiciously manly looking coat. Clint stepped up to the counter and ordered a coffee to go and a cookie. He then pretended to fumble for his wallet when asked for the payment. "_I'm sorry, my wife must have it."_ He smiled at the clerk and indicated he would be right back.

As he approached the woman he tried to keep his left arm, where it was still red from his scrubbing, behind him_. "Pardon me, Miss?"_

The woman looked up from her sandwich with a start.

_"You wouldn't happen to have a hair tie? My sister is trying to fix her hair and is just having a horrid time of it. One of hers broke and…you know how teenagers can be."_ He shrugged.

She grinned at him and fished one from her purse. "_Of course_."

As he took it he made a show of noticing the coat across from her. "_Is your husband in the restroom?_"

She nodded, her dark curls bouncing down in front of her eyes.

_"I ah…This is quite delicate_." Clint shifted, forcing himself to look as uncomfortable as possible. "_I overheard some strange sounds from the men's room when I was trying to help my sister…" _He grimaced. "_You may want to go check on him."_

Sandwich suddenly forgotten, the woman was up and rushing towards the restrooms in a huff. Clint quickly picked up her husbands coat and patted down the pockets – wallet secure. He put the coat on and strolled back to the counter to pay for the coffee and cookie with the man's credit card. The cookie fit nicely inside his pocket alongside his new wallet.

A glance out the window alerted Clint to the fact that the police had caught up with his stolen truck. He meandered with his fresh coffee over to the milk and sugar station and grabbed a fistful of coffee stir sticks. He balanced several of them across the back of his left hand and over his busted fingers before securing them in place with the hair band he'd acquired from the woman.

Once he was certain the makeshift splint was going to work he grabbed his coffee and headed towards the door, slowing only enough to liberate a beanie off the coat rack. The green woolen cap did wonders to hide his hair as he stepped out and nearly ran into an officer on his way in to the coffee shop.

The officer sputtered at Clint's blatant disregard for other people but before he could open his mouth, Clint interrupted. "_Officer. I'm glad to run in to you! A man came in…"_ Clint jerked his head back towards the coffee shop. "_He was covered in blood. I think he ran into the restroom."_

He stepped aside as the officer pushed past him with a new determination and started to stroll down the length of the parking lot, leisurely sipping his coffee.

At the end of the parking lot Clint noticed a train station down the road and with a vigor he didn't know he still had in him, he briskly walked to the train station and bought a ticket back to Volgograd.

The man's credit had been good for a private compartment and Clint settled in for the thirty two hour train ride. He slept straight through the first twenty hours and only woke to the pressing need of his bladder.

The adjourning bathroom to his compartment wasn't fancy enough to have a shower – which Clint desperately wanted but he'd gone longer without being able to wash before. As he zipped up his pants he realized this was probably the first and only time he'd have an opportunity to call in and report on his now defunct mission to Mexico.

Without bothering to wash his hands Clint pushed back into his compartment and checked to see if there was a phone. He wasn't really surprised to see that there wasn't given that he didn't even have a shower in the bathroom and so he made his way out into the corridor.

His leg started to cramp again as he hobbled down the hallway to see if there was a public phone he could use.

When he finally found it he had to wait thirty minutes for a young businessman to get off the phone with his wife so he nibbled on the now crushed cookie he had stuffed in his stolen jacket earlier. As the man finished, Clint flashed him a weak smile before stepping up to take the phone.

He dialed SHIELD's secure line and waited as the ringing directed him to the automated phone system of a fake photography studio. As the prompts were listed off, Clint quickly punched in the override code to get through to the SHIELD systems and waited for the familiar buzzclick of his transfer.

As he punched in his personal identification code, he wondered how much Coulson was going to scream at him for not reporting in sooner. The train intercom system activated to announce the next station and Clint missed what was said on the phoneline. Once the train announcement stopped he realized the line had gone dead.

"The fuck?"

He tapped the phone plunger thing down and dialed again, quicker this time. He put in his code a second time and listened for the usual greeting of whichever sap was stuck on communications duty this time.

"Authorization code denied." Clint blinked at the mechanical voice before he was disconnected again. He'd been entering that authorization code for so long it was impossible that he had gotten it wrong. Hell he'd even put that number in correctly while drunk and concussed in Rio.

He restarted the phone once more and dialed again. This time slowly punching in each number with a precision he usually reserved for his archery. The same impersonal mechanical voice informed him his code was still denied.

Replacing the phone on the receiver he stared at it a moment and tried to figure out what to do. There were other numbers, private numbers, he could call but there's only one reason they would have denied his code and not even taken a moment to speak to him.

Clint pushed out of the phone booth and stumbled past some college students on his way back to his compartment. As he passed from one train car to the next, he saw two men looking through the little glass window outside of his compartment. One appeared to be the train conductor and the other a security guard of some kind.

He watched as the conductor knocked on the door of his compartment before leaning over to mutter something to the security guard. Clint's lip reading wasn't so great with Russian, but even if he could read their lips, he didn't figure the odds were high that they had brought him a cake.

Clint turned and backtracked to the previous train car. The college students were still chatting in the hallway waiting for the phone and Clint casually swapped tickets with one of them as he went by to the next car. He checked the new ticket once he had cleared the lounge car and made his way to the unreserved seating area at the front of the train.

He collapsed into the first available seat he found in the open car and scrubbed his good hand through his hair.

"Fuck."

* * *

**Author's Note**: I know some of you thought things were rough for Clint before...but oh man, poor Clint is just getting going.

XD


	13. Nails for Breakfast

When Natasha arrived at SHIELD that morning for her follow up appointment on her arm, she swung by Coulson's office to drop off a donut from the place by her house that he liked. His office door was slightly ajar when she arrived and just as she was about to push it open she overheard the conversation going on inside.

"-Barton's location is presently unknown, yes sir."

"But you're telling me he tried to call in?"

"His personal code was used multiple times last night in an attempt to access the system."

"How can you know this but not know where he called from?"

"We traced the call to a train in Russia. Given the time we have pinpointed the location to outside Staraya Kulatka, Russia. Based on the location differences between the various calls it appears he was headed West. Although we can't confirm his destination or if he's still onboard the train at this time."

She heard Coulson's seat creak as he reclined back to contemplate this new information. Silence fell between the two agents and Natasha didn't dare move until she knew as much as she could.

The sounds of papers being shuffled – no doubt by Coulson.

"Agent Romanoff."

Natasha narrowed her eyes at the half closed door.

"I know there's only one place remotely near the city that makes those donuts, so why don't you bring them in here so I can enjoy them while they're still fresh."

Natasha pushed open the door and dropped the small baggie on Coulson's desk before backing off to the side of the room. The other agent seemed startled but whether it was on account of her sudden appearance or Coulson's ability to detect her - she couldn't tell.

As she leaned back against Coulson's bookcase she crossed her arms and looked directly at the communications officer. "What time did he call in?"

The small Korean woman looked nervously between Coulson and Natasha, the woman was clearly unsure what the protocol was and whether or not Natasha had clearance. "I…I'm not sure –"

Phil pulled the donut bag in front of him and grinned at the site of the giant bear claw. "Answer the question, Agent Choi."

"Our logs place the call just after 3am. Based on his location we estimate the time on Barton's end to be 11am."

"Why didn't anyone answer when he called back?" Natasha ignored the happy noises coming from Phil as he enjoyed his donut.

Agent Choi looked again at Phil before answering Natasha. "His authorization was deactivated…My overnight agents were not permitted – "

"Thank you, Agent Choi." Phil interrupted around a mouthful of donut.

She nodded to Coulson and Natasha watched as the woman stood and quickly made her way out of the room. Phil sat and enjoyed his donut and Natasha let him. When he finished he wiped his hands on the provided napkin and picked up the paperwork in front of him. If Natasha didn't know him as well as she did, it would have seemed like he had forgotten she was there. They sat quietly for several minutes.

"Don't you have an appointment with Dr. Callaway?" It wasn't the question she'd been expecting first, but technically she did have an appointment.

Natasha shrugged. "Something came up."

"Did Barton call you?"

"No. You?"

Phil put the papers down and she recognized at least some of them to be reports from her mission to Rome. "No."

She crosses over to the chair and drops down in front of Coulson. "So what's the plan?"

"There is no plan."

"You mean officially, right?"

Phil sighed and pressed his palms flat against the desk. "Natasha, his extraction failed and he went off the grid. You encountered him and he broke your arm. He's been flagged as a terrorist now. Besides, we don't even know it was him."

Natasha raises an eyebrow. "Seriously, Phil? Do you know how long those authorization codes are? Who else could possibly have been bothered to enter a sixteen digit number multiple times?"

"I have already asked Agent Choi and her team to run surveillance at the train stations. But so far we have not had any positive matches." Coulson folded the papers back into the folder. She reached forward to grab the folder from Phil, but he pulled the files back and away from her before tucking them securely in a drawer. "Agent Romanoff, you are not presently cleared for active duty."

Her eyes fell to her cast. It was still going to be at least a couple weeks before the cast was off. And a few more till she was cleared once she started physiotherapy. "You're right." She stood up and turned for the door.

"Natasha." Phil's stern voice halted her and she turned back. "If there's one thing I'm weary of it's when you agree with me too quickly."

She shrugged and motioned to her cast. "Like you said earlier, I have an appointment."

Coulson eyed her suspiciously. "Thank you for the donut."


	14. King of Pain

Clint managed to ride out the last hours of his train ride without being accosted by Russian Train Authorities. He picked up a stray pair of sunglasses somewhere along the ride to help hide his black eye and changed his hat to a more subtle black beanie. He'd had to ditch the wallet he'd stolen from bathroom guy earlier since they'd obviously tracked it to his train compartment and had resorted to picking pockets for cash.

He got off the train in Volgograd despite that being the place his ticket pegged him for. But he was too beat to hell and it was easier to blend in to the afternoon crowd at his actual destination than try to steal enough cash for another ticket from a different destination. As he shuffled between people with his face to the ground he liberated a little more cash from some unsuspecting travelers.

Once on the street Clint looked for a place he could go and sort out his next step without fear of being arrested, spotted or otherwise killed. The bustle of the train station fell off once he hit the streets and he headed toward where he recalled the town center to be.

He eyed several restaurants before he spotted what appeared to be the Russian equivalent of a bar and grill and he jumped at the chance to pop in and get a nice well-done steak.

Three beers and a delightful steak later Clint decided he was in the clear from the train police and it was high time he called Natasha – assuming she'd take his call after the whole arm fiasco. He didn't actually know where the entrance to Peter's base was and SHIELD wouldn't take his call.

A figure dropped down across the table from Clint as he dug into his pocket full of stolen Ruples to pay the bill.

"Barton!"

"Jake." Clint looked up, Jake seemed unusually happy to see him.

"We all thought you were dead, based on the news out of Orsk."

"That wasn't my fault." Clint grabbed his beer back from Jake and chugged what was left. "Lunatic cut his own throat."

Jake chuckled. "That's not the word that went round. Oh Peter was thrilled. Truly."

He could tell from the grin on Jake's face that his colleague was telling the truth and that shocked him more than Jake's sudden appearance.

"Come on, let's get back. Peter will be glad to hear you're alive." Jake grabbed his arm and lifted him up from the table.

"Clint Barton!" Peter's voice had boomed at the sight of them. "You really are as good as everyone said you would be! I can't believe it." Clint braced himself for a punch or some other form of pain and was instead wrapped up in an enthusiastic hug.

"Uh. Thanks."

Peter released him and poured him a drink, a straight glass of what appeared to be fancy Vodka. "I am just beside myself with your actions. You actually killed him!"

"Well I – "

"When I heard Daniill wanted to betray our cause. My own cousin wanted to sabotage my operation! I saw red. Punched Dimitri right through the window." Peter clenched his fist, mentally reenacting the scene. "And you were already out there and I couldn't call you back. I had no idea what that lying scum would do to you, my star sniper."

Peter poured more vodka in Clint's glass, despite it still being mostly full. "And you answer his betrayal by murdering him!" He holds up his glass in a cheers "To Clint Barton!"

Jake groaned as if it wasn't the first time they'd had that exact cheer and clinked glasses with Peter.

Clint tried to take another sip of the vodka, but he'd never been one for the stuff. Peter came over and tipped the glass back for him, causing him to sputter-swallow much more than he would have preferred.

"Drink up! Do you know what your actions have started?" Peter refilled the glasses. "People heard what I'm willing to do to my own family if they betray me. I'm getting calls, I'm getting support from all over for our little project!"

Suddenly Clint was regretting the three beers as another double serving worth of Vodka was finding its way down his throat at Peter's insistence.

"We may have hit a delay snag with Daniill blocking his part in the project, but we now have more supporters and additional funding with that pansy dead!" Another refill. "To Clint Barton!"


	15. Taking Care of Business

Natasha had no intention of going to see Dr. Callaway and she was relatively certain Coulson knew that. The fact that he didn't escort her personally to the office was an indication she took to mean that he unofficially authorized whatever she decided to do.

Once she was back at her own place she jumped on her computer and started searching for trains around Staraya Kulatka yesterday morning. Unlike the majority of the SHIELD techs she wouldn't be slowed down by running everything back and forth through translators.

There were only a couple trains headed West around the specific hour the call had come in and she knew SHIELD would already be running every facial recognition software they had on every station along that route. But Clint was a sniper, he was trained to be a ghost – so she wasn't interested in facial recognition software.

She quickly hacked in to the train company's database and accessed the passenger and crew list for each of the three trains she had flagged as potentials. The first one didn't have any obvious Clint cover names either that she'd known him to use or that stood out as something he was likely to use.

The second list however had a flag for a passenger. She clicked on the notice and was informed the ticket had been purchased with a stolen credit card. A further report indicated the passenger could not be found in his cabin and that a college girl had turned up with the ticket three stops later.

She looked at the original ticket. Orsk to Volgograd. In another window she pulled up local Orsk news. Several stories about a murder came up with the suspect warned to be still at large. "Getting sloppy, Barton." She tsk'd at the screen.

As she skimmed the article a single fact caught her eye. The deceased's only living relative was one Peter Bumovich.

"Gotcha."

She didn't need to pack a bag since she'd never unpacked from her Rome trip. She needed only modify some of the equipment she had brought with her. The files she had read in preparation for Rome had told her that Peter, although being Ukranian, kept a base in Volgograd where he had been running a small gang. And since Clint's initial ticket purchase had been for there, it was a good enough place to start.

She used one of her secret aliases to purchase the ticket. It wouldn't do her any good to have SHIELD too close on her heels before she got to Clint. And officially, she wasn't even allowed.

It had been a long time since Natasha had been back to Russia, and she was fairly surprised it wasn't under worse circumstances.

After fifteen hours of travel, including an unnecessarily long layover in Moscow, Natasha finally hit the streets of Volgograd. She felt a little bit bad for taking off without telling Phil, but a dozen donuts or so would probably make it up to him, assuming she found their missing agent.

Since she was tracking Peter it would be best to continue to use her cover as Marie DuBois and so she decided to book one of the fancier rooms in the swankiest hotel Volgograd had to offer, which frankly wasn't all that extravagant. She couldn't use Marie's credit card as she was keeping SHIELD off her tail, but hopefully Peter wouldn't look too closely at the payment for the room if he found her.

Her biggest concern was finding Barton, so she didn't really care if SHIELD tracked her down or if Peter found her out so long as she got to the bottom of things with Clint. After checking in to her room she changed in to a form fitting dress that was bound to get some men talking and hopefully spilling the exact secrets she was looking for.

The hotel concierge directed her to several of the nicer restaurants in town and Natasha mentally scratched them off her list as she thanked the man with broken Russian for his recommendations. Peter or his cronies would not be at the sort of places a high-end French woman would frequent.

Two blocks past the last recommendation on the concierge's list, Natasha finally arrived at the seedy end of town. From outside she could see the bar was full of the kind of guys who were likely hired goons for various gangs or clubs.

She could feel a several sets of eyes on her as she entered one of the decrepit bars. She kept her head up and walked straight to the counter. The bar tender stopped mid conversation with another customer and slid over to her. His smile did nothing to hide any motives he had to taking her patronage first.

_"What can I get for you, pretty lady? First drink is on the house."_

She pulled out her phone and slid it across the counter towards the bartender, a photo of Barton on the display, _"You tell me where to find this man."_

_"You don't need him. I'm sure he's not worth it if he ran off on a pretty lady like you."_ He winked at her.

_"He got my sister pregnant and left. I aim to kill him."_

The bartender laughed, his belting voice quieting down the bar as people started turning towards them. The man the bartender had been speaking with earlier slid down to sit alongside her. "_You want me to kill him for you, baby?_" The man said as he slid a calloused hand over the curve of her ass.

She turned towards the second gentleman, her face all smiles as if she liked what he was doing. She delicately traced a hand up his arm to his shoulder and before he could blink was gripping his arm with one hand and using the other to pop his shoulder from the joint.

As the man howled in pain she clocked him in the temple and as he attempted to keep his balance, she kicked out the stool from under him. He collapsed in a heap, his forehead bleeding from making contact with another stool on the way down.

She could sense another man behind her and she twisted on her own stool and with the bar as support she kicked the man first in the jaw, then in the gut. He stumbled back into the man behind him who jumped forward, gun in hand.

He stood still with the gun pointed at her. Their eyes locked and she raised her eyebrows at him, daring him to make a move. Without breaking eye contact she reached over to where butt touching man's drink was and picked up his beverage. She took a sip of the man's liquor of choice, which turned out to be a weak and fairly cheap scotch.

Somehow the idea that gun man had an actual gun on her gave him some confidence and he took a fairly large step towards her. She took another sip of the scotch and smirked at him. It was clear he wasn't sure what to do with that smirk since he tilted his head in the quizzical way a dog would.

The glass in her hand still had quite a bit of liquor in it and gun man was quickly acquainted with it as she threw first the liquid and then the actual glass in his face. The gun dropped as he grabbed at his eyes in agony and staggered back into the man behind him.

Reaching inside her coat she procured two knives. The first she threw at face kicked guy, embedding the blade into his thigh to keep him from advancing, the second she tossed into the arm of a man who had been helping dislocated shoulder guy but had decided to join the fray.

She then jumped down from her stool and swiftly lifted it out from under her and swung it into the face of another man which easily smashed his nose. With the toe of her shoe she flicked the gun man's fallen gun into the air and caught it as she pulled another knife from her coat.

The men on the peripheral of the bar hesitated as she poised the knife to throw in their direction. She pointed the gun behind her towards the bar tender and without turning to him barked out her order again. _"Tell me where to find that man."_

She heard the bartender pick up the phone with Clint's picture, the bottles behind the bar rattled as he nervously bumped them. "_He has been seen running with the Brotherhood. They are not far from here."_

She sheathed the knife and ejected the ammo of the gun before tossing the pistol casually to the side. As she returned to the bar she plucked the phone back from him and pocketed it. "_Tell me everything you know._" Her eyes scanned the bar, "_All of you."_


	16. Red Alert

Peter gave him two whole days off for not dying. Which was great, except for the part where Clint spent those two days thinking he was going to die from alcohol poisoning. Once his two days were up he was assigned temporary guard duty within the base until the next sniper mission.

Apparently it was the cushiest 'off time' job and one of the most coveted among the crew. Clint didn't really get that second part, but he still had the gun he'd inherited from Daniill and now he had a job to basically go where he pleased and investigate things that seemed like they were liable to be a problem. Although Clint knew that technically meant a problem to Peter, he preferred to use the other looser job description.

He knew that since he was back, he would need to gather sufficient intel to take down the operation before the anticipated ten thousand people died. If Daniill was correct, and Clint really wondered why he was trusting a guy willing to slit his own throat, then a lot of people were going to die because of whatever it was Peter was doing.

Unfortunately, Clint still needed to find out exactly what that was.

Sure it had something to do with randomly reprogramming robots, but Clint was going to need some sort of proof of how the whole thing functioned if he was going to get the entire operation shut down.

Even now that he had the clearance of security, however, it was difficult for him to find time when he was alone in an area he might be able to use to his advantage. The planning room seemed like the most logical starting point, but it seemed as if there was someone in there at all hours of the day and Clint couldn't get the time he needed.

He wondered how much it would hurt his cause to pull the fire alarm but thought better of it when he noticed only one person was in the main planning room just then. Damien was sitting at one of the computers hunched over a keyboard and frantically typing something. It was as good an opportunity as ever, besides, he was great with kids.

"_Hey Damien."_ He greeted as he pushed the door open and entered the room. "_Left you all alone with your work, eh?"_

Damien nodded but didn't look up from his screen.

Clint grabbed the pot of coffee that was available for those late night caffeine needs and started to pour himself a cup. "_Whatcha working on?"_

_"Really? Right now?"_ Damien pushed back from the computer. _"You fail to bring back Danniill's code, but somehow get branded a hero and now I gotta spend nearly 48 hours straight trying to recreate this stupid thing. From. Scratch."_

"_Whoa man, calm down."_ Clint poured another cup of coffee and brought it to the kid. _"I thought you liked it here?"_

"_I did. I do_." Damien took the cup and looked away, appearing drastically deflated as he sat for a moment and sipped the coffee. "_It was fun watching the guys get revenge on all the people who used to make fun of me."_

Clint nodded and focused his attention on the screen in front of Damien as he scanned it for clues. _"Tell me more."_

_"I'm not exactly able to keep up with most kids my age…physically. I always just got back at them by hacking their computers."_ He looked back at Clint. "_You buff guys can be real dicks you know that?"_

For the first time Clint noticed the stitches across a cut on the kid's temple that disappeared into his dark hair. He remembered Peter saying he had punched someone – Damien – through a window.

Clint sighed and rubbed his injured leg._ "What you do takes work. Just a different kind of work."_

"_I can't withstand the punishment for getting it wrong_!" Damien's fist clenched over his keyboard. _"Daniill was supposed to provide me with what I needed and you had to go and murder him! I can't plant our subroutine without the access he was supposed to program in!"_

_"He wasn't going to do it anyways, kid. It would be the same if he was still alive."_ He dropped a hand on Damien's shoulder and squeezed. "_Just do the best you can. You got the job for a reason."_

The kid started to respond when an alarm in the base started going off – the loud obnoxious beeping echoing down the corridors. Clint calmly placed his coffee on the desk beside Damien and pulled his pistol from his waistband. "_Stay here."_

* * *

Natasha had slipped into her Black Widow outfit after interrogating her new friends and had found their directions to Peter's base easy enough to follow. She had scaled the building from the outside and found dropping in to the second story hallway from the window was disgustingly easy – Peter really ought to be ashamed of his security.

She wasn't sure exactly where Clint was likely to be held, or if he was being held at all, but she knew she needed to extract him pronto. Figuring that it would be easier to find and extract him if he was a prisoner, she headed towards the inner part of the base. One of the goons at the bar had been here before on a delivery and while his breath had stank of beer and the blood from Natasha breaking his nose, his memory of the layout proved to be helpful.

He knew there were a couple of cells located in the basement which couldn't get more cliché unless Natasha discovered they were surrounded by a cheesy laser grid. She found the stair well easily enough and silently made her way down. Much to her surprise there was no laser grid or pathetic donut eating guard to slip by, simply two solid steel doors on either side of the hallway.

At the end of the hallway was a regular door and under the assumption that this was some sort of observation or control room, Natasha started her search there.

As expected the room had a one-way mirror on either side of the door each facing in to each of the different holding cells. Both were despairingly empty. She sighed and turned to the machine that was facing the door of the small room. It didn't take her much to hack the security of the machine and within minutes she was looking at files of video recordings for the two rooms in front of her.

The last recording was dated nearly two weeks after Clint had first gone missing and four days before she saw him in Rome. She clicked on it and a video feed of an unconscious Clint Barton hanging from what was clearly a dislocated shoulder greeted her.

His head was lolled back and his mouth hung open, blood tainted drool was running down his chin onto his disgusting and already bloodstained shirt. She thought maybe she'd seen him worse, but odds were she was just saying that to try and convince herself it wasn't as bad. Besides, she'd seen him up and around after the date on this recording.

As she skimmed the video in high speed she caught the moment when he had woken up and tried to gain some footing in a way in which he wouldn't pull on his damaged shoulder, as well as the moment when Peter returned to speak with him.

The video station she was working from didn't seem to have headphones or speakers set up so Natasha could only watch as the silent Peter spoke with Clint. His hand pinched Clint's damaged shoulder and finally after dumping the archer in a pile on the floor, he injected him with an unknown substance.

She looked up at the rooms. Through the windows she could clearly see one room with a chair in the middle and another with chains hanging from the ceiling. She punched the "unlock room" button for the chain room and dashed towards it. Being careful not to let the door close behind her, Natasha picked the lock on the small cabinet in the room and pulled out a vile of unknown liquid. Whatever it was, they'd been injecting Clint with it and if it was some sort of mind control, she'd need to bring some back so SHIELD could fix him.

She quietly slipped back out into the hallway between the cells and allowed the door to slide shut behind her. There wasn't much more she could get from this area and it was time she moved on to explore the rest of the base. She exited the detention area back into the main hallway. As the door clicked shut, suddenly the place was filled with the sound of an alarm.

"ебать!" Natasha darted back towards the entrance with the full knowledge she would only have a limited time before someone or something caught up with her and she got stuck in one of those super-entertaining rooms.


	17. Look What the Cat Dragged In

Author's Note: Sorry folks, I know this one is short. I'll try to make it up to you with a prompt update on the next chapter. :D

As always, thanks to all who have left reviews.

* * *

With the alarm still blaring overhead Natasha abandoned all plans of stealth and rushed towards the nearest door. She threw the door open and ran right into something or someone. The other cried out in pain and Natasha held the door partially closed between them as a temporary barrier.

She pushed the door open again, her leg quickly coming up and catching the other in the chest with a powerful kick. The man tumbled onto his back as Natasha quickly pulled her gun and aimed it straight at -

"Clint?"

Clint remained slumped on the floor where he had fallen, his hand up to his face, his nose gushing blood from where she had evidently hit him with the door. "Hey 'Tasha." He forced one of his stupid smiles at her from behind his hand.

As the alarm continued around them she stood her ground and kept her gun leveled. "What's going on, Clint? What's your mission?"

Clint shook his head. "No mission. Everything went sideways. Original scrapped."

"What are you still doing here?"

"I'm on to something."

Natasha stood over him, her gun trained on his head. She wasn't sure what to think.

"Nat." He grunted, trying to roll to his side. "Please."

"I'm bringing you in."

"No. Nat. I can't." She wanted to punch him, but his face had already taken enough abuse at the hands of this 'brotherhood'. "I've almost got everything, Nat. I need more time." He coughed, hacked and spit. She saw the blood tinting his saliva.

"You're killing yourself, Clint." She stepped towards him but faltered. She knew better than to get within his striking distance.

"There's something big going on. Nuclear big. I've got to stay in."

"SHIELD thinks you've turned." She could hear the distinct sound of boots approaching, knew she didn't have much time. "If you haven't then you'll let me get you out. We can attack this with a proper team and a plan."

"Natasha. I've got-" He coughed again, "to stay." He turned his head to the door, no doubt also tuning in to the approaching people. "Go. Leave me."

"Clint." Her thoughts flickered to the vial in her pocket, the briefest possibility that Clint was being drugged but his eyes told her otherwise. "I can't-"

"There's no choice, Nat! I'm in no condition to run with you and they'll kill you if they see the SHIELD uniform and realize you're also Marie." She cursed under her breath in Russian and he grinned a bloodied grin at her. "But make it look like you tried."

"Tried what?"

"To take me out." Her eyes flew open wide and she stared at him. But he knew what he was asking and he nodded at her.

"No way."

"Consider it payback for your arm." He lowered his hands to his side in an open invitation for her to shoot him.

She looked from his bruised eye to the blood flowing into the medium beard growth he'd acquired. "I'm not shooting you!"

"Nat. You have to!" He glanced back to the door. "If I was anyone else I'd have been dead the second you saw me. I've got to maintain cover."

"You're not anyone else, Clint." The gun wavered in her hand. "You're, you're my…partner."

"Tasha." He pulled himself to his feet. "I love you too."

She briefly considered using him as a hostage and dragging him out forcibly. But the Clint she'd always known was pleading with her to shoot him and maintain his cover. While she couldn't understand it, she could clearly see her partner's sincerity. "If you die on me. I'll kill you." She growled as she aimed and squeezed the trigger.


	18. I'll Fight For You

Clint felt the burn through his shoulder and fell backwards in pain. He suppressed the shout to prevent Natasha from staying but almost couldn't hold it as he watched her bouncing red locks disappear from view.

It wasn't that he hadn't been shot before, it just didn't make it any more fun when you were already beat nine ways from Sunday. He took solace in the fact that the brotherhood at least did have a medical bay and a competent nurse.

He was glad Natasha at least still trusted him. Since based on his call to SHIELD on the train, he'd already been written off and any other agent probably would have ended him without so much as a second thought.

The sound of the gunshot caused the approaching footsteps to speed up and Clint knew it was only a matter of time before they would find him. He didn't bother trying to sit up or drag himself anywhere and opted instead to lie in the growing puddle of his own blood.

When the door burst open Clint half expected someone to come over and see to him, but instead they barely faltered long enough to decide which way Natasha had gone. Figured they would be more worried about getting the intruder than taking care of one of their own.

The two guards took off in different directions after Natasha and Clint lifted his head to watch them go. "Assholes." Clint thought he'd rather lay in his own blood then spend any energy trying to get up and out on his own. Someone would come back for him eventually. But if he bled out, Natasha would find a way to make good on her promise to him.

He struggled to sit up and once he was finally on his feet he had to hold the wall for balance before he could move. It took probably three times as long as it should have, but eventually he made it to the room that had been designated a "medical" bay.

The room was empty and Clint groaned as he grabbed a fistful of gauze and flopped down on the meager cot that stood in the corner of the room. He twisted to check his back and once he confirmed there was an exit wound, went to work bandaging his own shoulder.

Once he finished he collapsed sideways on the cot and dozed off. It wasn't until someone was kicking the edge of the cot did he wake up again.

Peter stood at the foot of the cot, his boot kicking the meager frame. "Wake up."

Clint moaned and rolled onto his back. "I'm up."

"What happened?"

"I got shot."

Peter sighed and moved over to the cabinet where he leaned against the counter. "By whom?"

Clint pulled himself upright, wincing at the tightness in his shoulder as he moved. "I didn't see. I was hit and down pretty quick." He knew there weren't cameras within main areas of the base and Natasha wouldn't have been foolish enough to use an exit point with a video feed.

"What happened to your face?"

Clint's hand came up and bumped the bridge of his nose. It was rebroken. He'd forgotten on account of the shooting. "Hit with the door. That's how they got the jump on me."

Peter growled at him and for a second Clint thought he might get punched as he watched Peter's fist clench and uncoil. "This is all your fault!"

"What?!"

"You were on security. You're relieved of that. Get out of here."

"I –" Clint started to defend himself but was cut off by Peter.

"Base security is clearly not in your repertoire. Now I need to clean up this mess. Get out of my sight before I decide on punishing you for this."

Clint pocketed some tape for his nose and with a hand pressed to his shoulder he slipped out of the room.

* * *

Natasha made it back to her hotel room without incident and the second the lock was secure she was shakily sliding down the wall to the floor. The image of Clint falling backwards as she shot him replayed in her mind. Whatever it was he was into had to be serious for him to break her arm, for him to insist she shoot him. She had to find a way to help him.

Slowly she made her way back to her feet. Her legs were still shaking but she couldn't afford to think of what she'd just done and what it might mean for him. She went to her bag and started to change into jeans and a baggy top. She would need to get more intel on what was going on and she wanted to do it discreetly this time.

Her phone vibrated in her bag. Very few people had the number to her private cell. She turned it over and saw Phil's name on the screen. For a second she thought about not answering it but it wouldn't do Clint any good for her to get branded a traitor too. She swiped her thumb across the screen and brought it to her ear without saying a word.

"Natasha." Phil sounded concerned and a little bit defeated. "I need you to come in."

She wandered into the bathroom with the phone still pressed to her ear as she checked her makeup. "I thought you said I wasn't clear for active duty." Her eyes flicked to her cast.

"That's why I'm calling you in, Natasha. You're unauthorized."

"To take a vacation?" She tsk'd before placing the phone on speaker and resting it on the counter so she could put her her hair up. "Gee Phil, what am I authorized for?"

"Natasha. You and I both know you're not on vacation." She could practically picture Phil dragging a hand through his hair in frustration.

Her eyes flickered to the call duration on her phone, if Phil stalled her for another 45 seconds or so he'd have a lock on her location. "Sorry Phil, but that's where you're wrong. I'm heading to the zoo now and I don't want to be late for the tour!"

"Nat-" She clicked the end call button before he could even finish. It would probably piss the agent off to no end, but she didn't have time for whatever logistics the SHIELD paper pushers wanted to play right now. She had a Hawk to save.


	19. Let the Good Times Roll

**Author's Note:** So I'm super awful about having consistent chapter lengths. And as such, you get probably one of the longest chapters this story has right here. Thank you to all who continue to review. Much love. :D

**WARNING** - There is some non-con esque emotions in this chapter. It's brief and there's nothing graphic, this story is rated T after all. Just want to flag it in case.

* * *

It only took her several bars and the entire evening to get the information she needed and as much as she wanted to march right into Peter's lobby and save Clint with it, she knew she had to play it safe to keep Clint's life from being further endangered.

As she showered off the scent of beer, cigars and gross bar food she debated her next action. She would need to get in to the base again but this time not as a threat to Peter and that left only one option – Marie Dubois.

If their last interaction was any indication, Peter was attracted to Marie and frankly that was the point of that specific cover. As she pulled on an appropriate outfit she also carefully pulled her cover into place. Once she was ready she picked up the hotel phone and dialed Peter's number.

She didn't really expect him to answer personally, but was pleasantly surprised when he did. "Bonjour, Monsieur Bumovich." She purred in her French accent.

"Hello - ?"

"C'est Madame Dubois, Monsieur."

He grunted in some sort of recognition. "Marie Dubois. What can I do for you?"

"I am in your neighborhood and have acquired some information you might have use of." She propped the phone against her shoulder as she tucked some knives into the sheath on her inner thigh.

"Oh and what information might that be?"

"Non, non, Monsieur!" She scolded him. "I offer an exchange."

She could hear Peter shift on the other end of the line as he considered her offer. "Is this information in line with what you gave us last time? It was incredibly helpful but I think we're above needing anything else for our cause -"

"I have information regarding a threat to your organization." She cut him off. "And frankly I don't expect to give it away for free. But I will allow you to have it for cheap."

"I'm listening."

"Votre bête," She paused as if she'd forgotten the English. "Your brute. He has left aspects of my job incredibly challenging. I'd like an evening to extract revenge."

Peter laughed long and hard and Natasha had to wait for him to catch his breath. "You're right. That is cheap." Peter continued to laugh in her ear. "He's been due for some punishment for his latest fuck up, why don't you come by tonight."

* * *

Clint had been sleeping peacefully in his room when Peter and some other goonie Clint hadn't met before had come to collect him. They escorted Clint into a pretty fancy room with a large bed in the middle. "The fuck?" Clint struggled against them when they tried to push him down onto the bed.

Peter picked up a needle that Clint was all too familiar with and Clint held his hands out in front of him compliantly. "Hey wait. Let's talk, you don't need to go there."

"Get on the bed, Barton." Peter circled the bed with the needle in hand.

Clint eyed two other guys standing guard in the doorway and shuddered as the man in front of him shoved him hard against his shoulders. The push made him stumble backwards and he reflexively grabbed at the sharp pain in his left shoulder as he fell onto the bed. He knew Peter was upset with him, but this really didn't seem like the man's style. "Come on guys, you've got to be able to find willing women somewhere in this city?"

The goon who had escorted him from his room punched Clint in the face and he toppled over onto his side on the surprisingly soft mattress. The other two guys came into the room and he was suddenly being held down by the three guys as Peter placed the needle on a table.

He struggled against the three guys but one of them had a hard grip on Clint's shoulder, the man's palms digging in to the crevice left by Natasha's bullet. He suppressed a cry of pain as the man realized where his hands were and pushed harder into the wound.

"Guys. Guys –" He writhed under the increased pressure on his shoulder as one of the goons at his feet removed his boot and cuffed his ankle to the footboard. "Please." He grit his teeth as his other boot came off and his ankle also cuffed. His right hand was lifted above his head as the pressure on his left shoulder increased to keep him from fighting and his arm was handcuffed to the headboard.

"Please don't." He barely whispered as his last arm was brought up and bound, leaving him in a fully spread eagle and helpless position. He couldn't help the tear that escaped his scrunched shut eyes as one of the men went for his belt.

"I'd appreciate you leave the rest for me." Another voice interrupted and Clint's eyes shot open and towards the source of the words - Natasha.

* * *

Natasha watched from the doorway with her arms crossed as the men backed off Clint with Peter's nod. She could see Clint's chest heaving as he tried to calm himself down from the near panic attack he had undoubtedly been headed towards.

"I seem to recall you saying you didn't like an audience, Madame DuBois. But there will be a guard and security camera just on the other side of this door." She nodded in response. "Feel free to do any damage you'd like to him, but I'd prefer if you didn't kill him."

"Where's the fun in that?" Natasha tried not to growl.

Peter pointed to a single syringe on the table across the room from Clint. "This will increase his pain tenfold and paralyze him. It can be quite useful." He checked Clint's restraints and Natasha noted how Clint shied away from the man's touch at each of his bonds. Once he was satisfied Peter stepped out of the room. "Enjoy your revenge, Madame."

Natasha refused to meet Clint's eyes until after she walked the perimeter of the room and disabled three 'secret' cameras that had been left. As she found the fourth and final one she looked directly into it and shook her finger. "tsk tsk. No watching."

When Peter or his goonies didn't immediately come in to reinstate the cameras or insist she have them on, she knew she would be good. Now it was time for Clint. She turned to him, his breathing ragged and his eyes scrunched shut. The swelling on his left eye had gone down and the bruising was just about every color she'd ever seen a bruise all at once. She figured it probably could open now if he wanted it to.

She sat gently on the edge of the bed and, with the handcuff key Peter had left bedside the syringe, and slowly undid his bonds. His face scrunched up in pain as she lowered each arm from above his head to beside him. She knew the left shoulder was the one she'd shot and gently placed her hand on his right shoulder. "What happened here?"

She rested a hand on his wrist and covertly took his pulse while she waited for his response. His pulse was steadying but was still a little more rapid than usual. His breathing had started to calm but he still managed to answer her with a carefully even tone. "Dislocation."

She surmised it was old and had been set. Besides he probably would have screamed when she moved it if it was still dislocated. She removed her knife from her boot and slowly cut up his shirt. "How bad is it?" When he didn't answer she cut away the entirety of his shirt, her hands recoiling each time she uncovered more of the bruise he was currently trying to pass off as his body.

"Clint."

He shook his head, but his eyes remained closed.

"God dammit Clint, this is going to get infected." His undershirt had dried to the bandage covering the bullet wound she had given him. It took several wet towels for her to loosen the shirt without starting the bleeding again. She quietly redid his bandages with some cloth strips she had snuck by Peter in her bag under the guise of needing them for more naughty tasks.

She moved for his pants and his hand fluttered to stop her. "Tasha." Their eyes met and the pain and resignation she saw there was not something she had ever associated with her partner before.

"Don't you dare try to stop me from helping you, Clint Barton." He dropped his hand back to the bed and closed his eyes. She took a breath and smoothed out the purple sheets alongside him. "They know purple was your favorite color?"

He shook his head. "Lucky coincidence." His breathing was even now and she took his pulse again. "I'm okay."

"You've been through a lot." She brushed a hand through his hair. "Will you let me help you?"

He stifled a yawn and nodded. "Just don't shoot me again."

"That was your idea." She defended herself as she pushed his hand aside and gently worked his pants off his hips before sliding them down his legs. The sight of the green tendrils working their way around his left thigh startled her. "Fuck."

"You? Okay." He muttered sleepily, his eyes still closed.

She wanted to punch him but there didn't appear to be anywhere she could actually do that without breaking him further. "How the hell are you still alive?"

"Carnie trick. Shhhh, it's a secret." His lips played up at the corners as his eye fluttered open to meet hers. "You gonna kiss me or do I hafta do all the work?"

Natasha snorted. "Like you could even move if you wanted to."

"Got no choice. Gotta keep going." His eye started to drift shut and she pinched his right leg to startle him awake again. "God you suck at foreplay."

"It's not foreplay, perv. I'm trying to keep you alive."

"Good. Cause I suck at that."

"I noticed." She peeled up the bandage and revealed the source of the infection. "How long have you had this?"

"Since the day I was born."

"Not the leg you imbecile. The knife wound." She got more towels and tried to clean the gash. It took every effort not to gag as pus seeped from the wound. "You had this when I saw you in Rome didn't you?"

Clint winced as she attempted to clean the wound, his eyes screwing shut in pain again. "Legs. Don't leave home without em."

"Stay with me, Circus Boy." The wound was jagged and clearly self doctored without proper medical equipment. "Is there anything in that syringe that could help this?"

Clint snorted. "No. Just fun juice to make my pain ten times worse." He turned his head away from her now. "I thought you paid the big bad wolf out there so you could use and abuse me, not play nursemaid."

"Clint…"

"Tash-" He turned back to her. "I know it's bad. But they're gonna kill thousands of people with little tiny evil robots." His left hand came up and caressed her cheek, the rough tape he'd used to keep his fingers straight was coarse against the side of her face. "Nanotechnology. Certain areas of Medicine depend on it to save people's lives. Children's lives. Tens of thousands of people."

She cupped his hand with hers, the cast around her wrist rubbed against his arm.

"I can't let that happen, Nat. No matter what. Even if this is what happens to me." He closed his eyes again, his face steeling itself in a way she knew meant his mind was made up and nothing would change. "This is what we do. I nee-"

She cut him off with a kiss, catching him off guard and causing his eyes to snap open. "Okay." She whispered against his lips, the scruff of his beard scratching her chin.

He licked his lips, seemingly a little bit surprised at her actions. She ran her free hand along his hairline and kissed him again before pulling back and sitting upright with his left hand cradled in her lap.

"But you're right. I didn't pay to clean out your nasty puss filled wounds." Resting his hand back on his abdomen she picked up the knife and made work of the rest of his clothes before standing and removing her own.

He maintained eye contact as she slowly stripped instead of roaming her body like so many marks were apt to do. "You're beautiful, you know that?"

"You're not even looking." She teased as she reached back to unhook her bra.

"Yeah. I am." But his eyes never left hers. Their gaze remained locked as she dropped the last of her clothes beside the bed and kneeled on the edge of the mattress.

"Flattery part of what I paid for?"

"So now I really am your whore, aren't I?" As she lifted her naked body over his she couldn't help but smile. "You should ask for your money back." He took hold of her forearms to steady her. "I'm damaged goods."

She lowered her body slowly over his and pressed their faces close together, her lips melting in to his again. "Shut up."


	20. Finish What Ya Started

"Tasha" She adjusted her head against his bare chest so she could look up at his face. "You have to tie me back to the bed."

She sat up, allowing the sheets to fall away from her. "The hell I do."

"Marie Dubois has a reputation." Clint looked for a moment at her naked breasts before meeting her eyes. "You can use this. Be smart, Tash. You know I'm right."

She looked at where the various restraints were still hanging from the bed frame before she met his eyes. "Are you going to be okay with that?"

He knew his little freak out yesterday was on her mind, but they didn't have a whole lot of choices. "It's either that or you inject me with that happy potion." He nodded to the syringe still resting where Peter had left it. "And you'd better not inject me if you don't plan on doing me again. Cause I'm sure that stuff amplifies pleasure same as it does pain."

"You're already injured. Wouldn't the pain just cancel out the pleasure?"

He sighed. It had been worth a shot to get her to stay. "You're probably right." Slowly, he closed his eyes and raised his arms above his head. "Go ahead." Natasha hesitated and Clint cracked an eye open. "What's wrong?"

"I don't like it." She leaned back against the footboard of the bed and drew her knees to her chest. "You're going to get hurt."

"I'm already hurt."

"No." Her eyes flashed up angrily. "There's folks in town, they want to burn this place to the ground. And Peter knows but he says his plans will be finished by then."

"Then what's the problem?"

"Either he's right and you get killed by his plans…or he's wrong and you die in a tragic fire set upon this place by some rival gang."

"Gee, Widow, it's almost like you care." He teased her as he propped himself up against the headboard.

She looked over at the syringe on the table. "I know for a fact he's going to test it first. Locally."

His eyes followed hers to the syringe. "How locally?"

"Very."

He nodded and turned his gaze back to her. "Then we act fast. Today even if we can."

She turned back to him and rested her chin on her knees. "What do you have in mind?"

"Take the syringe. Call SHIELD. They can analyze it. I'll get the data we need off the mainframe."

"So I leave you here?"

"Like it or not, Natasha, I'm inside on this one. You get that syringe to SHIELD at least and maybe they can figure out a way to hack the nanobots. Unless you got a better plan?"

He could tell she was weighing the options, considering the cons. But she finally shook her head. "I'm going to extract you in twenty-four hours. Regardless."

"I'll try not to break your arm this time if you leave the shooting to the bad guys." He shifted back down the bed and stretched his limbs out again so she could tie him.

She bound him back to the bed, the restraints much looser than they had been when Peter's goons had done it. Once he was secure again she stood and picked up her clothes. After she dressed she sat on the edge of the bed and delicately ran a hand along his naked chest.

He squirmed a little and tried to get away from her stimulating touch. "Nat, that's not fair."

"You told me to be smart, Hawkeye." She circled hear hand once more on his chest and then leaned over his face, her hair cascading down around his head. "Marie would never leave a man so satisfied." He groaned in a mix of frustration and happiness as she kissed him.

Once she had him where she clearly wanted him she reached up and loosened the left restraint to the point where it was nearly undone. She kissed him one more time and stood - taking the bed sheet with her. "HEY!"

He pulled his left arm, and cringed at the pain from his bullet wound. He tried twisting it free as she collected the syringe and put it in her bag. "Natasha, this is just cruel."

"Marie." She corrected and he mentally cursed himself for giving her the idea to leave him like Marie would. She paused and placed the balled up sheet on the table where the syringe had been. "Clint." He stopped squirming to meet her eyes. "Are you sure you're okay with this?"

He took a deep breath to steady himself. "I hate you a little bit right now." He twisted his left wrist again and it suddenly came free. "But yes."

She shouldered her bag and knocked on the door for them to let her out. When they opened the door she spoke to him softly in French before leaving. "_Love you too, Hawk_."

* * *

Author's Note: This chapter is crazy short...and I'm feeling bad about that. I think I'll give you the next chapter quite promptly. Maybe even within moments.


	21. We Didn't Start the Fire

_"_Good Morning, Madame Dubois." Peter offered her a coffee, "did you enjoy your revenge?"

Natasha crossed the small room and took the coffee. "I always enjoy my toys. Whether or not they enjoy it…is not my problem."

Peter laughed. She could see that he liked the idea of her hurting Clint even more than she originally believed. "That drug is wonderful though isn't it? Really makes a person pliable." Peter's grin widened.

"Mais zut. It broke before I could use it." She watched Peter's reaction carefully and his incredible anger at this news only confirmed her suspicions that the syringe had been laced with the trial round of nanobots.

"Why that bastard!"

"Non, non!" She raised her hands. "It slipped, shattered."

Peter clenched and unclenched his fist. "I'll be sure to adequately discipline him."

Natasha was about to object when she realized she would do more harm to her cover than good for Clint. She needed to get out and get the syringe to SHIELD if Clint was going to get injected with a new dose of the stuff.

"Thank you for the coffee." She stood, her half empty cup still steaming on the table in front of her. "I must be going or I'll miss my flight."

"Thank you for the information on those crazy bombers." She watched him lustfully look her up and down. "You sure you don't want to go another round with a real man?"

She tried not to gag at his assertion he was more man than Clint. "I will miss my flight and I have other business to attend to."

"Of course. Next time you're in town then."

"It would be a pleasure." She allowed him to take and kiss her hand. "And you know who to call if you need further intelligence of any sort."

One of the guards appeared at the door then, a young…person in his wake. Natasha had a moment trying to figure out if the twenty something behind the guard was a guy or a girl, but as she walked past on her way out and smelt the unmistakable smell of raspberry body wash, she assumed the kid to be female.

Clint had taken his time undoing the rest of his restraints. Partially because he was tired, but also because he didn't really want to have to get up and face Peter. When he finally did get up, he realized Natasha had cut most of his clothes off him with the exception of his jeans. "Damnit, Nat." He muttered as he picked up scraps of his boxers and shirt. They were pretty useless and he fumbled his jeans on without the luxury of underpants.

He picked up the bundled top sheet Natasha had left on the dresser and draped it over his shoulders like a weird purple cloak. It would have to do. He tested the door and was stunned to find the door unlocked. A single guard was leaning in the hallway and he startled to alertness when Clint stepped out into the hall.

Fortunately, Clint had the element of surprise and although he wasn't proud of it, he didn't particularly want to draw out a fight with a single guy and so he took advantage of the man needing to draw a gun with a swift knee to the guy's groin. When the man stumbled forward, Clint wrapped his right arm around his neck in a chokehold until the guy passed out.

It took him a moment to drag the unconscious man back into the room Clint had spent the night in, but he assumed locking the guy in was the best option. "Sorry about the jewels, dude." He grimaced as he patted the guy where he lay in a heap on the floor.

When he stepped out to lock the door he realized it didn't even have a lock. That certainly explained the guard. He shrugged and headed down the hallway. He paused walking down the hall, realizing he was outside Peter's office and with another glance over his shoulder ducked in to the room. It was blissfully empty and he went to work downloading the information he'd promised Natasha he would get.

Getting on to the mainframe was simple from Peter's computer and instead of digging around for exact files he just copied the entire thing to an external hard drive he found in the desk. He did some light stretching as he waited for the files to copy and grimaced when his leg cramped up on him - kneeing a guy hadn't done his leg any favors.

He sat down and massaged the muscles with his right hand as he unplugged the completed drive. It was small enough to stick in his pocket and so he tucked it in to his rear jean pocket and liberated a small pistol he found in Peter's drawer.

He rubbed his face as the vision in his left eye doubled. He knew the swelling had gone down, but something was still wrong. Unfortunately it was a concern he'd have to address once he got out of this joint. As he wrapped his purple sheet shawl around himself again, he made a mental note to stop by his room for a new shirt.

The hall was still empty when he ducked back out into it and it seemed like as good a time as any to get that shirt. He headed towards his room, which was just through the many lobby/kitchen area. He didn't expect his no interaction luck to hold through the kitchen, but he really didn't expect to be faced with four loaded guns pointed at him when he opened the door.

Clint put his hands up in the air, his purple shirt/cape falling into a pool at his feet as he did such. Alex and Peter's guys all pointed their gun at him. "Hi Alex." He quirked, throwing a half smile at the girl. "_What brings you all the way to Russia_?" He asked quietly in Spanish.

She swung her gun back towards Peter who was now cowardly hiding behind his goons. _"I came for this scum_." Two of Peter's guys returned their guns to Alex, keeping her lined up. The third left his gun trained on Clint.

With his hands still in the air, Clint surveyed the situation. Alex was alone, her single pistol taking turns aimed on one of the three guys. He wondered why she wasn't dead when he noticed her left hand was holding some sort of trigger or something.

"_A bomb_?" He knew the answer before she even nodded her confirmation.

"SHUT UP!" Peter yelled at Clint. The man was clearly annoyed he was speaking Spanish with their attacker. "Do your damn job, Barton."

"_And which job would that be_?" He spat back in Russian. "_Delivery boy? Hired gun? Whore?"_

"_Whatever I tell you to do_. _Now kill her_."

"No."

Peter blinked at him. Alex turned, but left her gun trained on the men in front of her. He met eyes with her and then flicked his gaze upwards and to his right. He watched as she followed his line of sight and then, with a quizzical and confused look, nodded at him.

"What do you mean?" Peter growled at him.

"I mean I won't kill her. I am under express orders to do just the opposite of that."

"By. Whom." Peter ground out, his fist clenched in anger.

"SHIELD."

Peter sputtered and Alex fired. He watched the bullet hit the exact ricochet point he had keyed her in to and bounce back and clean through Peter's temple.

The three men in between Alex and Peter froze as their leader collapsed in a pile behind them. Clint took their moment of hesitation to charge them. With the three men lined up in a row to protect Peter from Alex they bowled over like human bowling pins. He heard at least one gun go off in the calamity but he didn't hear anyone cry out and assumed the shot went wide.

He snapped one man's neck and tried to wrestle a gun from the second. He was shoved off sideways and the gun disappeared where he couldn't find it. The third man was picking himself up as the second launched himself into Clint. Clint managed to catch the second guy with both feet and send him flying over and past Peter's dead body. He wind-milled his legs and knocked the gun from the hand of the now standing man.

The second guy was behind Clint and picking himself up as Clint stood. He blocked several punches from the two guys but was too slow to stop a hard kick to the stab wound in his thigh. He grunted as he fell to his knees. The third man followed up with a kick to the back of his left shoulder and Clint toppled backwards onto Peter's body.

He struck out with his right leg and placed his right hand behind his head to push up and off when he felt something cold just inside Peter's jacket. A gun. With a sigh of relief Clint grabbed the gun and dispatched both men before they could start stomping on his face.

It took him a moment to sit up and when he did he was face to face with Alex. Her gun pointed decidedly at his face and her left hand still clutching a trigger.


	22. Down to the Line

Alex kept the gun leveled at Clint. "So it's true? What they said?"

Clint dropped the gun and stood up, his hands in the air as he maintained eye contact with her. "Is what true?"

"Clint Barton? Secret agent?" Alex's finger quivered on the trigger of the gun. "Was everything you told me a lie?"

"Not everything."

"Who are you?"

"I was sent to help you, not take you out. I was expressly told that you were not to die." Clint shifted his weight off his bad leg. "SHIELD sent me." He could tell she didn't know what to do with this information and he took the moment to step slowly over to a chair and sit down. His arm still raised in defense so she won't shoot him.

"What does SHIELD want with me?"

"I don't know. Above my clearance level. You guys were starting to become a pretty big deal, maybe they wanted to go into business with you ever since Stark Industries went all green happy...Hard to get a good local weapons dealer I guess." Clint shrugged.

Alex seemed to debate this. "Why'd you throw in with them?" She looked down to where Peter's body lay.

He laughed, a weak chuckle that hurt more than he expected. "I wasn't exactly given much of a choice."

"My dad died."

"You came for revenge." It wasn't a question. He could see it all over her face.

She nodded anyways to confirm.

Clint sobered up, looked her in the eyes. "I'm sorry kid. I did everything I could. There were too many of them that night."

She nodded as if she understood. "You saved my life. For that I owe you." The gun safety clicked on and Clint let out a breath. "I'll let you go. But I don't want to see you again."

Clint nodded. "I'll tell SHIELD to steer clear. But don't go causing any giant wars, I can't make promises they'll stay away after that."

She had the gun down at her side and Clint could tell she wasn't entirely sold on not shooting him on the spot. "You're a good kid, Alex. Your dad would be proud."

Alex's eyes narrowed in anger but softened quickly. "You're right."

"You wanna…put that bomb down now?"

"What?" She looked down at the trigger in her hand. "Oh." She tossed the trigger aside, the little plastic mechanism bouncing off the floor and landing in a pool of goon blood. "Its not a bomb."

He blinked as she unzipped her coat. Inside was a vest with the strangest looking bomb he had ever seen.

"Super sized Kit Kats." She pulled one of the 'explosive' pieces off and took a bite. "I'm not stupid."

He blew out a breath and shook his head. "You're going places, kid. That was gutsy." She stripped the vest off and threw it on the floor. As she turned to leave he called out to her. "Hey Alex." She paused, her back turned to him. "Don't forget - respect your equipment."

She nodded, her grin barely visible from where he was, and then disappeared.

Clint remained sitting at the table exhausted from the effort of taking down the three guys. He focused his energy on trying to get his vision to straighten out. He wasn't sure if his head had hit the ground during that scuffle, but his left eye was still giving him a lot of issues.

He felt a sudden and unexpectedly familiar pinch in the side of his neck and whirled around so fast he spilled out of his chair onto the floor. He felt the needle still lodged in his neck and could only hope there hadn't been time to depress the plunger as he landed once again amongst the dead body of Peter.

Standing over him was a fairly triumphant looking Jake, a knife brandished in his hand. "As soon as that kicks in, we're going to have some fun you and I."

Clint groaned with the realization that the drugs were already swirling in his system and grabbed the gun he'd dropped earlier at Alex's insistence.

"How about we don't." He growled as he shot Jake right between the eyes. Jake's body took a second to catch up, but when it did it collapsed on top of Clint. The weight of Jake's landing knocked the wind out of him and he wished for all intents and purposes that he could just lay there until the drug had gone through his system but a new pain in his side meant Jake had gotten lucky with his knife.

He quickly fumbled for Jake's pockets and pulled out a phone. His arm started to seize up as his thumb frantically pushed in the numbers and hit call. The paralysis overtook him and the phone slipped from his now useless hand and bounced across the floor.

The small speaker was pretty far away from him and so he wasn't sure if it was ringing or not, but he put as much effort into calling out to Natasha on the off chance she did answer the call.

His voice was the last to go as the drug caused his mouth and tongue to stop working and all he could do was lay there in pain as his now heightened senses made him more and more aware of the new piercing pain in his right hip where Jake's body lay on top of him.


	23. And Your Bird Can Sing

To say Phil had been mad with her was probably an understatement. But he had promised to come collect her nonetheless. She showered and changed into something comfy and then reclined on her bed where she could stare at the syringe on her nightstand while she waited. A timer on her phone ticked down to the agreed upon extraction time for Clint and all she had to do was wait for SHIELD, convince them to wait for Clint and then get the hell outta dodge.

Her phone rang suddenly and she leaned forward and picked it up. It was an unknown local Russian number. The only person in the country who had this number was Clint so she answered it. "Hello?"

For a second all she heard was grunting and then a weak and painful "Taaashaa. Naaaaaaaat."

"Clint!" She shouted back. But if he heard her he didn't react besides saying her name again, weaker each time until she couldn't hear him at all. "Clint don't you dare!" She scooped up her glock and ran out the door.

She burst into Peter's place without caring and ran through the strangely empty building. Peter had told her there was some run he was sending his guys on and she hoped Clint hadn't been sent with them or else she was going to have a really hard time finding him.

When she entered the small dining area she'd met with Peter in that morning, the sight stopped her dead in her tracks. A pile of bodies was strewn about near the table, a bomb appeared to be sitting just a few feet from her and no one was moving.

She went to the bomb first to make sure it wasn't active and squatted beside it. The entire vest appeared to be filled with random wires and large Kit Kats. It was something Clint would do to screw with people. Speaking of whom, he had to be here somewhere as a mess like this simply screamed Clint Barton.

Next she investigated the pile of bodies, most of them she didn't recognize. Except for two – a very dead Peter Bumovich and a very trapped looking Clint. His eyes were wild with panic and Natasha knelt down among the bodies and placed a hand on either side of his face.

"Clint." Her voice brought his attention to her and some of the panic faded. "Can you move?"

His eyes blinked rapidly and she was about to try and calm him down when she realized he was blinking Morse code at her. She watched his eyes and concentrated to figure out what he was saying. Finally she realized he was keeping it simple for her and was blinking out "N-O." over and over again.

"Okay." She noticed then the needle sticking out of his neck, the contents completely empty. "Shit." With care she took the needle from his neck and tossed it aside. "Was that the stuff?"

She watched his eyes as she lifted the dead body off him. "Y-E-S spells yes." She muttered. His eyes pinched shut as she lifted the body off him. "Where the fuck is your shirt?"

He didn't open his eyes to answer and frankly she hadn't expected him to. She started to move him off Peter's body when she noticed the knife sticking out of his hip. "Clint. Look at me."

His eyes fluttered partially open and she could see an immense pain in them. "How long does the drug last?" She watched him blink at her slowly to make sure she didn't miss the letters. _A day_. "Are you sure?"_ No._

The knife appeared to have hit or skimmed just above his hipbone and Natasha left it in in case it had done any major damage. She looked around at the other bodies, knew based on Peter's bragging these weren't all the guys in his command. "I gotta move you, Clint."

He blinked rapidly at her again. _No._

"We can't stay here."

Again he blinked. _No_.

"SHIELD is at least ten hours out. This position isn't defensible." He closed his eyes at that and didn't open them. "Clint."

She spotted the purple sheet from their bed last night lying on the floor near a side door and she went to retrieve it. He was too heavy for her to carry in any way that wouldn't hurt him so she'd have to drag him out. The sheet started soaking up blood as she laid it on the floor next to him.

"Sorry, Clint." She shuffled him as gently as she could onto the sheet and tied it around the base of his feet so he wouldn't slip off. She tied the top corners together as well to make a better handle and then started dragging him towards the rear door.

The layout of the place had been committed to her memory days ago and she easily found a garage of sorts that was empty save for Peter's personal vehicle. It took a lot of work to yank Clint up into the back seat of the car, but he never made a sound.

As she climbed into the front and started the engine she wished he would say something instead of just lying there with his eyes scrunched shut.

She drove them about an hour out of the city and parked the car behind an abandoned barn she found. Once she was sure the area was safe she texted the new coordinates to Phil and settled in to wait.

She kept constant vigilance on the area. Going so far as to do a perimeter check at various intervals to make sure no one had followed or found them. In between checks she sat in the front seat of the car and leaned over to watch Clint stare at the ceiling. As far as she could tell none of the blood that was covering him was actually his except for where he'd bleed through his thigh bandage and where the knife was still sticking out at the top of his jeans.

"You're going to have to get new jeans." She joked with him. "Unless you have a reason to have a hole in your pocket that goes through to your underpants." He didn't respond and she stepped out for another perimeter check.

Something about the air was different and Natasha was fairly certain it wasn't because of the sun setting. She pulled her gun free from her belt and held it out as she turned the corner. Six different SHIELD agents commanded her to freeze in one unified voice.

She held her gun up and allowed them to take it from her. "Where's Coulson?" She asked as two of the agents stayed with their weapons trained on her as the rest went around the edge of the barn.

She heard varying shouts of "Freeze" and "hands up" from around the corner where they had undoubtedly found Clint. The two agents with her yelled "Freeze" again as she took two big steps backwards to clear the edge of the barn and see the car where Clint was.

"You idiots he's paralyzed!" she shouted at them as one of them pulled the car door open and shoved his gun into the backseat.

"Paralyzed?" She turned back to see Phil stepping around her two guards. He patted one of them on the arm and they both lowered their weapons. "Permanent?"

"No. Not that I'm aware of. A drug of some kind. I have a sample –" she patted her pockets and came up empty. "Back at my hotel."

Phil nodded and rounded the corner of the barn. "Agents stand down." The four guys stepped back and took up defensive positions around the vehicle. "You two, get me a stretcher." The two men beside her ran off the way they'd come and Natasha followed Phil's path back to the side of the car.

He leaned into the vehicle and she watched his eyes scan his battered agent's body. Phil seemed upset in a way she wasn't used to seeing him and when he stood and spoke, she finally understood why. "Clinton Francis Barton. By order of SHIELD, I hereby place you under arrest."

* * *

XD I'm not done with him yet. Several chapters still to come.


	24. The Road Home

Natasha hadn't said a word to him since she'd punched him in the gut with her cast and then been wrestled into restraint by the SHIELD agents that were with him. He looked between where she had wedged herself into a seat at the front of the plane and was currently glaring daggers in his direction and Clint who was trussed up in the rear.

Clint had regained power over his limbs about halfway back to their New York base but had already been cuffed to his stretcher. He had thrashed so bad that Coulson had told the on board medic to sedate him even though he wasn't sure how it would interact with the drugs already in the man's system.

They'd collected the sample drug Natasha had found and were attempting to run a diagnosis on it by uploading it to their main SHIELD database. He only hoped whatever the affects were, that they wouldn't cause severe permanent damage to Clint.

The second they landed a swarm of both security and medical personnel came out to meet the plane. Most of them whisked Clint off but several of the security personal remained at the plane.

"Am I under arrest too?" Natasha growled at him.

"No. You're temporarily suspended until we sort this out." Phil nodded to the two men tasked with watching over the Black Widow – neither of them looked happy about it. "These men are to take your weapons and escort you first to medical for your check up and then to your room where you will remain until the council is able to come to a decision."

"ебатьсовет" she spat at him as she removed her widow's bites and several knives before standing and following the two men.

Coulson sighed and went to make his report to Fury.

* * *

They found a hard drive in Clint's pocket. It had a tremendous amount of data on it based on the reports Phil had in front of him. He wasn't even sure what half of what he was looking at was, but there was something about nanotechnology that had put the tech guys in a frenzy.

The syringe had been holding a thousand inactive nanobots and they'd discovered a truly impressive number of them in Clint's bloodstream. They weren't sure what the purpose was and some of the techs were still trying to sort out the various aspects of the hard drive to figure that out. But they'd added an extra guard to Clint's room when they'd realized he was infested with them.

A lot of very smart people were fighting over what to do about the nanobots. Some were suggesting an EMP and others that they activate the program found on the hard drive. The program was locked with a code that they had thus far been unable to break.

Clint wasn't being very cooperative. But then, he'd been restrained and under constant guard since his return and Phil couldn't blame him. He pulled Clint's file open, the medical report sitting on top of the report declaring Clint a traitor after he'd broken Natasha's arm.

Besides nanorobots, Clint was diagnosed with severe dehydration, two stab wounds – one which had pierced his large intestines, a gunshot wound, an orbital fracture and three broken fingers. Natasha had recounted something about a dislocated shoulder but it appeared to have healed on its own as far as their medic team could tell. But bottom line was, after a week of being back he was out of the woods, medically speaking.

Natasha appeared in his doorway. She was still confined to base and Phil knew she could leave if she really wanted to. "You need to talk to that kid."

"What kid?" He didn't bother to look up at her.

"Damien." She dropped some donuts on his desk. So she had left the base then and she was proving it to him for a reason. "He was at the base with Clint."

"How do you know that?"

"I spoke to Clint." Phil looked up from his papers now and took in Natasha. She was disheveled in a way he wasn't used to seeing her outside of missions gone wrong. Her cast had been removed and replaced with a light brace and her eyes bore an exhaustion she didn't try to hide.

"You're not allowed."

"Really. That's the card you wanna play." She pushed the donuts towards him. "Little Agent Romanoff isn't allowed so let's just ignore the facts." She shoved his guest chair away from the desk.

"Natasha."

"That kid Damien knows about the nanobots. He can help. Stop it before it gets worse – which is what Clint was doing." She snatched the donuts back from him. "Or is your head so far up your collective paper pushing asses that you don't see what's going on?"

Phil sighed as she stormed out his door. As he pulled the report of the hard drive in front of him again he started skimming for a new name – Damien.

* * *

"Director Fury, is this all really necessary?" Clint weakly lifted his arms, the chains of his handcuffs clinking gently against the metal bed frame.

Fury for his part moved across the room silently, his eye never coming off the page in front of him. Clint shifted but settled in to wait. He was used to Fury's tactics.

"Says here you were using your real name, Mr. Barton."

The lack of the word 'agent' drew Clint's attention in a way he knew Director Fury wanted it to and he couldn't help the way his eyebrows shot up in response.

"I was compromised. Recognized by a former colleague." He spread his hand against his thigh, resting it just over his stab wound. "I'll happily write up the report as soon as I'm cleared from medical, Director."

Fury made no motion for a moment before he looked up from the paperwork and actually looked at Clint. Clint's own vision failed him for a moment as a blurry double of Fury danced beside the real one in a sort of mocking mumbo.

"I'm not sure you understand. You have been declared a traitor to this organization and to your country. You have been found to be in league with a terrorist organization and there is evidence pointing to your involvement in the planning of a major terrorist attack against the Russian populace where you were not authorized to be. You denied a direct order to come back in, injured your former partner, abandoned your post and fell right back in to some of the habits you swore to me personally you wanted out of."

Clint couldn't maintain eye contact. The duplicate Fury was giving him a headache that the actual Fury was hammering home with each overly enunciated word

"Did I leave anything out, Mr. Barton?"

"No Sir, Director Fury."

"I'm not your director anymore, Mr. Barton." Fury closed the file and turned for the door. "You have been stripped of your status of SHIELD Agent and will remain prisoner here until such time as a trial can be arranged to determine the penalty for your actions."

Clint barely managed to hold on until Fury had closed the door before he found himself vomiting all over the floor beside the bed.


	25. When the Whip Comes Down

Bringing Damien in had been easier than Coulson had expected. The kid was a techy nerd, but clearly not a trained operative. Once he'd discovered the dead bodies in his home, he had fled to Egypt for some reason.

SHIELD had been able to find him fairly easily as he wasn't very good at hiding himself in public and had disturbed more than a few people when he'd be wandering around the pyramids going on and on about being 'taken home'.

As Coulson looked at him in his cell, muttering and pacing, he couldn't help but wonder if the kid had cracked. Regardless, he had followed a lead and no matter how frayed the string was it still needed to be pulled.

He strode into the cell with a bottle of water and the kid instantly shut up. "Damien Yozhin I'm agent Phil Coulson. I want to talk to you about your recent employ under one Peter Bumovich." Damien's eyes flickered to the water bottle and Phil held it out. "Go ahead."

The kid grabbed the bottle and drank violently. He had half the bottle downed before he looked at Phil. "They're crazy."

Phil carefully schooled his features, it wouldn't do any good to apply that word to the kid just now. "Who is?"

"Peter. Jake. Viktor. Clint." He took another long drag on the water bottle. "All of them."

Phil wrote the names down, he didn't recognize Jake or Viktor's names from the files. "Why?"

"They're all so violent. You know in video games it seems so fake. Just pow pow, dead. But I got thrown through a window!" He pointed to a fading scab on his forehead. "You see this!?"

Phil nodded, the thought that the kid was actually crazy still not being ruled out.

Damien finished the water. "Clint fucked everything up and I had to fix it and then everyone died."

His pen faltered on the paper. "What did Clint do?"

"He killed that guy. Dannill. Peter was real happy, threw him a damn party. But it screwed up my job. I don't think Peter knew." His eyes went wide. "Don't tell Peter!"

Phil leaned back in his chair. They'd only attributed one kill to Clint and he carefully wrote Dannill's name down in a side column to look up later.

Damien kept muttering "Please don't tell Peter, Please don't tell Peter."

"Peter is dead."

Damien let out a breath. "Did Clint do it?"

"I'm not at liberty to say." He wasn't actually sure who had killed Peter, but it wasn't exactly relevant to this conversation.

"Are you going to kill me?" Damien's voice went chillingly cold. "I deserve it."

"Why would you deserve that? You're what? Twenty one?"

"Nineteen." The kid corrected.

Phil made a note in his folder. "Tell me about the nanobots."

"Peter wanted to hurt people. Something to do with his family, his one true love. I didn't understand it. He hated Russia. Hated the world for letting Russia do whatever it was they did. I dunno man, some Ukranian thing – ask him."

"Peter is dead." Phil repeated.

"Oh thank Anubis."

Phil quirked an eyebrow. "Did you program the nanobots?" Damien nodded. "Can you deactivate them?" Damien nodded again. "Kid, tell me everything and I'll make sure you're safe."

* * *

Author's Note: Sorry again for the short chapter folks. I'm awful at chapter length consistency. There's only two more chapters left though and I promise they're much longer!


	26. Bits and Pieces

For the first time in almost two weeks, Phil finally went to see Clint. Clint's eye looked awful. The colors surrounding it had faded but the eye itself was recessed and red in a way the medical team had never seen before. Natasha lurked in the observation room to watch Phil explain to Clint what was going on.

"Phil," Clint all but begged when he saw Phil enter the room. "What's happening to me?"

"You have an orbital fracture, Clint."

"No shit."

"Do you know what that is?"

Clint hesitates. "No, Sir."

Phil visibly stiffened at his use of the word 'sir' as if he didn't believe Clint's sincerity in the title. "Your skull has fractured on account of blunt force trauma to your eye. Without surgery your eye will slowly sink down into your head –"

"Phi-" Clint squeaked. "It's my a-aiming eye."

Phil stiffened. "At this time we are unauthorized to provide medical attention for non life threatening injuries to prisoners – "

Clint croaked. A cry that emulated deep within him and drowned out the rest of what Phil had to say. He tried his best to curl up into a ball in the corner and Natasha could see from the pinch in his forehead how much the fetal position was further aggravating his injuries.

She turned away from the viewing window then. The only sounds coming from the room were the soft clinking of Clint's handcuffs as his shoulders shook. Natasha fought to hold back tears of her own as Phil stepped out of the room and into observation with her.

"You have to do something."

"My hands are tied."

"Phil."

"Natasha, he broke your wrist. He wouldn't extract when I called, he wouldn't extract when you were there with him!" Phil turned to look at her. "I can't get the paperwork to get him approved back to even probationary agent status."

"Don't take away his eye, Phil. Don't you dare do that to him. He saved me. Hell he saved my entire country!" She whirled towards Phil. "Thousands of Russians would have died. He stopped a huge conspiracy that if it had gone forward would have killed hundreds of thousands before there was even a fix on what was going on and you won't even save his goddamn eyeball." Phil's face was a stoic as always and Natasha wanted to punch him for it. Instead she mustered as much venom as she could. "презренный."

She spared another glance back to her partner and upon seeing that his position was unchanged, she stormed from the room to her quarters.

Half way back to her quarters Natasha changed route and made a b-line for Director Fury's office. She blew past his secretary without even a glance at the usually verbose woman and slammed Fury's door against the wall.

"You're going to authorize surgery on his eye."

Fury looked up from his phone call and narrowed his own gaze back at her. "I'm going to call you back." She crossed her arms as he hung up the line and stood behind his desk. "First of all, you're going to apologize for putting a hole in my wall with the doorknob."

Natasha didn't bother to look at where she knew his doorknob must have stuck.

"Secondly, I will do no such thing."

"If you refuse to fix his eye I refuse to remain in your employ."

"Is that so, Ms. Romanova?" Fury pulled some papers out of his desk. "Seems to me you're under a pretty strict contract and leaving SHIELD before terms will get you locked up by the UN for your time in the KGB."

Natasha crossed her arms. "You know what he did was right, Fury. Don't punish him for doing what he had to do to complete his mission."

"His mission?" Fury balked. "His mission was to befriend a child and stop said child from starting a new company that would lead to the weaponizing of every individual in North America. His mission had nothing to do with Russia where he was skipping around under his real name and killing people!"

Natasha closed her eyes and exhaled, attempting a calming technique Clint had once taught her for shooting.

"Now if you'll please get out of my office, I have to phone the president back after this little interruption."

She turned but stopped in his doorway. "You once told me that by bringing me in Clint had defied a direct order." She turned and looked over her shoulder at him. "But you allowed both he and I to stay. In fact you've said on multiple occasions we are your premiere team."

"What's your point, Agent?"

"It seems to me Clint didn't disobey any direct orders this time. And now you're going to take away something he depends on for his life, no his livelihood. All because he ended up somewhere he wasn't meant to be and did what he had to to survive and you won't even hear his side of the story."

Fury remained silent as she turned towards him.

"Put him on trial. Fine. But he did befriend that kid and he did stop that expansion as per your orders. And he went on to stop much more. If you take a look at his condition right now, you'll see he barely managed. Now you want to take away his eye? How'd you feel when you lost yours? Multiply it by ten for him." She spat the words at him before storming out of his office.

* * *

Clint wasn't aware of anything anymore. He stopped moving, eating, talking. He was going to spend the rest of his life imprisoned by his own people with an eye that was going to sink slowly into his head until it was useless to him.

He fixed the gaze of his good eye on the ceiling and refused to focus on anything else. They eventually hooked him up to an IV to preserve his life so it looked like starving to death was out of the question.

He drifted. Wasn't sure how much time passed or whom he passed it with. For the most part he was alone. A nurse would come by to change his fluids and he was passively aware of someone uncuffing, stretching and cleaning him one limb at a time. It didn't matter.

One nondescript time of day he woke to find the uncomfortably blurry double vision of his left eye replaced by…nothing. There was just black and it took Clint seconds to realize he wasn't able to open or see anything from his left eye at all.

He pulled his wrists desperate to try and feel his own face, but also afraid of the hollow void he would find there. A monitor beeped, the speed of the chirp increasing exponentially as Clint continued to thrash against his restraints to get to his eye.

Voices filled the room, but Clint wasn't hearing them. He vaguely registered a scratching sensation on his own throat and realized he must have been screaming. Natasha grabbed his head then, turned his face to hers and dropped her forehead down to meet his.

He squinted his goo- his only eye shut, could feel the tear that rolled down to meet her fingers. She kept a gentle pressure where their faces met while cradling his head until the drugs they pushed into his IV took him under.


	27. Love is Pain

The next time he woke he was further restrained. Bindings had been wrapped around his upper and lower arms, upper and lower legs, and his torso. He stared at the ceiling with his one eye and with a choking breath, sobbed.

Natasha was there again. Her voice singing gently to him a Russian lullaby he didn't recognize. He tried to pull away from her. All he wanted was to coil in on himself and die but the restraints kept him from moving at all.

His brain didn't register anything she said as he mourned the loss of his eye.

Natasha wouldn't leave him and he wanted to scream at her but he couldn't control his voice and he thought there was a chance he already was screaming. He started to thrash and pull at each of the restraints so violently he was sure one of them would come undone. A weight settled over him and tried to hold him down, but he just fought harder until his energy was drained.

He kept his one eye shut, he didn't want to look at anyone. Tears still flowed down one side of his face. A gentle had wiped the tears away and he felt Natasha's hand rest against his cheek. She was going on in Russian still but he turned his head away from her as he continued to weep. A weight rested on his chest and he realized when her hair tickled against his neck that it was her head. She was holding him down bodily then.

They lay like that until he cried himself to sleep. And he couldn't be sure, but he thought he felt a wetness pooling on his chest also.

* * *

Natasha stayed on top of him until he was asleep again. Then she wiped her own tears and pulled the blanket from her chair up onto the two of them. She'd stay as long as he needed.

Several nurses tried to come and shoo her away, but she pulled a gun on them and they left. A few hours later, Coulson appeared.

"Natasha."

He stepped into the room and she pulled her gun again without even looking. "I'm not leaving."

She heard Phil's steps stop short near the doorway. "I'm not asking you to."

"Then what the fuck do you want?" The gun lowered.

"I want to help."

She turned her head over and rested it again on Clint's chest so that she was now facing Phil. "Where was that help weeks ago?"

"Natasha." Phil ran a hand through his hair. "I did everything I could. Everything I was allowed to do."

"Lies." She hissed. "You didn't tell me until it was too late."

"Is that what this is about?" Phil stepped closer into the room and when she brought the gun up again he grabbed the chair and pulled it back towards the door before sitting in it. "I'm sorry I didn't bring you in. You had a mission to take care of it would have – What's done is done. I'm sorry."

"If you ever deny me important information about my partner again, Phil. I swear to God." Her finger was still on the trigger of her gun, she may not have Clint's aiming skills but she always got close enough to get the job done.

He nodded. "It won't happen again."

She pulled the gun up to her side again and stared at Phil without saying another word. She'd given him tons of chances to help Clint and he'd denied them all.

"We brought Damien in like you suggested." She hadn't known that. Phil must have done it underwraps. "He helped us. Told us about Clint, helped us decide to save him."

She looked back up at Clint's sleeping face. "He still doesn't know."

"Is that why you're restraining him?"

She nodded. "He won't listen to me. He's so upset he can't even hear anyone over his own screaming."

Phil stood again and she didn't attempt to stop him this time. "I might be able to help with that."

She sat up and maneuvered herself to the edge of Clint's bed so as not to sit on him. "What?"

"That syringe you brought back. Besides the nanobots it also had a drug in it that induced a sort of –" Phil searched for the words. "Locked Body Syndrome. He can't move, only his eyes. We duplicated it without the nanobots."

"The paralysis." They had used it on him during his captivity too many times, she didn't like the idea of using it again. "The drug he was tortured with."

"How much more is he going to hurt himself if we don't?" Phil stepped up to her side, "He needs to know."

* * *

Clint woke up again and something was different. His eye was still missing, but something else was wrong. He looked around the room and noticed both Phil and Natasha sitting at the foot of his bed chatting. Natasha looked up like she knew he was awake.

"Clint. Don't be worried." He tried to pull away as she stood and grabbed his hand when he realized he couldn't move. "Clint. Clint, stay with me."

He wanted to scream, wanted to do anything but he'd been locked in a prison of his own body again.

"Hey, hey hey." Her hand stroked the side of his face – it felt amazing and was ten times more comforting than it had ever been before. "I'm sorry, Clint. You wouldn't listen to us, this was our only option to talk to you without you hurting yourself more."

Phil circled the foot of the bed and Clint refused to meet his gaze.

"L_isten to me, my little Hawk_," Natasha cooed at him in Russian. "They saved your eye."

Clint blinked at her wildly. He didn't believe it. She stroked his face again, her thumb gently rubbing circles at his temple. "I promise. It is covered while you heal from the surgery."

He closed his only – no his uninjured eye in relief.

"I apologize about before." He heard Coulson's voice speak up now from the foot of his bed. "We didn't have all the facts. Once we started digging into the Nanotechnology we realized what you were doing."

"The security footage I procured didn't hurt either." Natasha mumbled as she turned her gentle brush into a scalp massage.

"The details surrounding your presence with Peter were unclear until recently." Phil stated and Clint could have died as the sensation of Natasha's fingers stroked through his hair. She must have realized how much he was enjoying it because she lightened the massage and then stopped completely.

He looked up at her then and she nodded her head towards Coulson. Clint didn't want to look at the other man, but something about Natasha's gaze suggested he do as she said. After all, he was going to be stuck in this stupid paralyzed state for a while.

"It has become clear that you went above and beyond in your service to your country. That you made the best of an awful situation and in the process saved thousands of lives." Coulson smiled. "On behalf of the council and Director Fury, I'm happy to welcome you back into the ranks of SHIELD, Agent Barton."

* * *

**Author's Note:** YAY! Things finally got better for Clint!

There's a teeny TINY epilogue still to come. But It's very very short.

Thanks to all who have followed along the story and for all your wonderful reviews. :D


	28. Epilogue

After several weeks of intensive therapy and rehab, Clint had been cleared for active duty with the explicit requirement that said duty be light and either short term or on an active SHIELD site. He had grumbled a little bit about the terms of his reinstatement but Phil knew he didn't want to push his luck in the event that they'd change their minds and as such had accepted.

He was clearly stiff and sore all over; the fingers of his left hand were slightly wonky and he was having a hard time bending them enough to get a good grip on his bowstring. It frustrated him to no end, but he kept pushing himself. He kept going to therapy longer than assigned with the hope that it would help him get back to full strength just a little bit faster. Of course it didn't help that he alternated the therapy with the gym against the suggestions of his physician and handler.

Phil entered the physical therapy room in such a rush that Clint froze, the weighted medicine ball dropping to his feet at Phil's sudden appearance. "I thought you were with Nat in California?"

"I need you in New Mexico."

It wasn't a question, but it also wasn't an order and Clint blinked in shock. The therapist collected the medicine ball from his feet and replaced it on the rack.

Clint nodded at Phil and went to grab his sweatshirt from where he'd dropped it on the chair earlier. "What's in New Mexico?"

"An 0-8-4. I'll tell you on the way." Phil tossed him his water bottle where it was sitting on the counter at the door. "How's your shooting?"

Clint flexed his left shoulder and made a fist with his left hand a few times. "Stiff. Not 100% yet."

"We'll get you a gun."

Clint followed Phil down the hall towards the hanger. "I'd rather requisition a right handed bow for temporary use."

Phil stopped and looked at him. The younger man stood still under his gaze as if he wasn't sure what was going on in his handler's mind. Phil couldn't help but think back to the last discussion they'd had before he'd sent Clint off on a mission, a 'lost, one eyed Hawk' hadn't been far from the truth. Clint quirked an eyebrow at him questionably as they continued to stand there, the bruising on his face was almost completely gone.

Phil grinned and started down the hall again. "We can certainly do that, Hawkeye."

* * *

**Author's Note**: And that's all there is folks. Thanks again for sticking through it! Much love to all the reviewers.


End file.
